As a student at Carleton University I can access and use
Canadiana.org content (
http://www.canadiana.org.proxy.library.carleton.ca/en/). I have been going through census reports, bulletins and instruction manuals to census commissioners from early 19th century as part of my dissertation.
I was really excited to find this resources, but later discovered that one can only access it if one pays membership fees.
They are a non-profit which requires some revenue generation. There are mutiple membership types (
http://www.canadiana.org.proxy.library.carleton.ca/en/doc/forms/memEN.pdf). It is a really great initiative and project, I can see that institutions supporting this initiative with membership fees helps keep the project going, but should that provide exclusive access only to them? Could a model of access be more open, as in the institutions agree to participate and contribute but make the data available to all canadians? Does paying always mean at the exclusion of others? Is this not the job of our National Archive? I am guessing this emerged as the National Archive was either incapable or unwilling to do this.
Canadiana.org (
http://www.canadiana.org.proxy.library.carleton.ca/en/about) a national membership alliance of partners governed by an active volunteer Board of Directors made up of distinguished scholars and representatives of major research libraries from across Canada, alongside partners who strongly champion access to Canadian heritage. Our pan-Canadian platform recognizes the need for many types of partners and sectors to participate in the governance and financial support of the organization and its mission. Governance will be as representative as possible of the many constituent sectors. Canadiana.org is collaborative so as to give it the flexibility to grow and the agility to respond to changing opportunities
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