Directions for Change

Conclusion

Our ability to deliver on our vision rests, as it always has, on our staff and on the collection. Covering Canada's textual, visual, audio-visual and electronic heritage, the combined collection is vast, rich and diverse. The richness and relevancy of its content are the core strength upon which our ability to deliver value to Canadians rests, and we will continue to build its strength. Yet it is the expertise and creativity of our staff that allows us to build that collection, to manage it well, and to deliver it back to Canadians through services and programs.

LAC is a new institution, and it will need to grow into its future. To define its best contribution to the social, economic and cultural development of Canada as a free and democratic society, is a long-term endeavour and one that will involve continual reflection and constant change.

Our initial reflections have pointed us in certain directions. We know better now what we want, and need, to become.

We want to be a new kind of knowledge institution, finding opportunities through the synergies of being a single institution to be better than we were separately in the past. We want to have a national presence and impact, to contribute meaningfully to the quality of life of Canadians of all ages, from all cultures and regions. We want to work with other institutions to build a strong, cohesive national documentary heritage collection, framing ourselves as only one part of the whole. We want to lead, within government and within our professional communities, in our area of expertise in information and knowledge management. We want to be an important learning destination so that Canadians may better understand Canada's heritage, knowledge, and culture. Through these means, we believe that we will contribute significantly to the success of Canadian society.

We will place Canadians at the centre and view their access, use and understanding of our resources as our primary driver. We will embrace the opportunities that digital information and technologies afford us. We will understand that we are stewards of our collection on behalf of Canadians who are the real owners, and that managing our resources involves managing risks. We will question our professional traditions related to description, and think strategically about how metadata will help us achieve our goals of serving Canadians effectively. We will look to do more steering than in the past by understanding our roles as a national institution and increasing our leadership and strategic focus. And we will view our organization, its roles, and its processes holistically-as the intricately integrated system that LAC is, rather than as separately mandated areas of discrete activities competing for resources.

We have also identified the strategic internal approaches to help us reach this vision. These are directions that will guide the changes we make in how we go about our business; they are our internal ways and means. There are some key concepts that recur in these strategies-terms like diversity, flexibility, mobility, accountability, multidisciplinary teamwork, permeability, and learning. These are the underpinnings of the kind of organization we want to be.

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