The Canadiana Collection is comprised of centuries of Canadian documentary heritage and holds rich primary materials covering a wide range of subjects and disciplines. However, the metadata of items in Canadiana may have incomplete, inaccurate, and missing attributions and rights statements. Additionally, due to the size of the Canadiana Collection, items at the individual level have not yet been thoroughly assessed for culturally sensitive content.
Accurate and complete rights attributions, as well as information on culturally sensitive materials, are important for researchers who plan to use and re-use Canadiana content. Rights statements and attributions provide details on how historical materials may be used and shared by the public, and protect the rights of creators and their communities.
Rights Statement Pilot Project
To begin to address these issues, CRKN engaged in a Rights Statement Pilot Project with Canadian law firm Clark-Wilson in 2020. The goal of the pilot project was to create a framework for defining user rights on a sample segment of the Canadiana Collection. The resulting framework would then be applied to CRKN’s entire digital heritage collection.
At the 2020 CRKN Conference, an overview of the Rights Statement Pilot Project was presented to CRKN members with an opportunity for feedback. The response from members was positive and indicated a willingness for CRKN to proceed with the implementation of the project.
The pilot phase of the project is now complete. Under the guidance of the Preservation and Access Committee, CRKN has now moved to the implementation phase and the following documents are now available:
- Canadiana Terms of Service: the updated Terms of Service outlines user rights for accessing the website and content of Canadiana.
- Review Protocol for the Canadiana Collection: the Review Protocol indicates the steps a user may take to indicate that an item in the Collections is culturally sensitive or is missing rights attributions.
The pilot phase also included the development of a Framework for Sub-Collection and Individual Rights Statements and a Memo Regarding Indigenous Cultural Property in the CRKN Collection which will guide future phases of this project.
Three licenses for incorporating third party digital heritage content into the Canadiana Collection have been developed. These licenses will be used when CRKN begins to accept third-party content into the Canadiana Collection.
A preferred license is chosen based on the rights of the content being integrated in the collection. The three categories of content are:
Implementation of Updated Rights Statements
CRKN will be integrating new or updated rights statements on sub-collections and individual items in the Canadiana Collection. As this is a substantial undertaking for a collection the size of Canadiana, under the guidance of the PAC, the process has been broken down into phases to make the largest and most impactful changes first.
The phases are:
Stage 1: Apply collection level rights statements to Government Documents, Serials, and Monographs sub-collections.
Stage 2: Apply the individual rights framework to all new items, the top 1,000 accessed items, single author monographs published prior to 1920, and single or small batches of records requiring an update.
Stage 3: Apply the individual rights framework to Government documents, followed by monographs, and finally serials. Where possible, the application of rights statements during this phase should be ordered by usage.
The rights statements for individual items in Canadiana will be inserted and updated from time to time as the project continues. On the Canadiana website, please refer to the About tab of each item, each time you access the item, to see the current rights statement as it may have changed since you last viewed the item.
This page will be updated as we progress through this project. For more information, please contact info@crkn.ca.