Collaborative Projects

Objectives

• Promotion and coordination of large-scale national projects for the development of authoritative genealogical content, such as national indexes, thematic guides, training tools or educational products, where several stakeholders from the genealogy community are involved.
• Development of standards and best practices relating to each type of collaborative content project.
• Contribution to the federal government strategy of providing opportunities for citizens to create online communities and to work together to develop Canadian cultural content.
• Provision of online access to collaborative tools, in partnership with the Department of Canadian Heritage, to allow genealogical communities that do not yet have access to such tools to use these resources and to work together to produce content that can be shared with all Canadians.
• Creation of a Web site where genealogical products of national interest, which are created by Canadian genealogical communities in concert with the Canadian Genealogy Centre, will remain under Canadian ownership and under the control of Canadian cultural institutions, while being shared by all at no cost.

Criteria

• The project to be developed must be national in scope and the content must be Canadian or related to Canadians.
• The project to be developed must be of interest to genealogists and family historians as expressed through consultation with users.
• The project will be developed in accordance with standards established for the type of content proposed and using the current technology commonly available.
• The project may be proposed by a department of the Government of Canada, a provincial or municipal government in Canada, a Canadian citizen, a Canadian non-profit society, association, consortium, foundation or other organization, or a network of Canadian organizations whose membership is composed of genealogists or family historians.
• The single-phased or multi-phased project must demonstrate that the copyright or residual diffusion rights to any portion of the content to be developed will allow it to be incorporated into a common instrument, to be available to all Canadians, at no cost, via the Web site of the Centre.
• The project must demonstrate that the proposed content can be published in its entirety in accordance with the Privacy Act [http://laws.justice.gc.ca/en/P-21/index.html].

Partnership agreements may be signed with the Centre on the basis of meeting these criteria.

Hosting Content

Objectives

Library and Archives Canada, in conjunction with the Department of Canadian Heritage and other partners, is developing the Canadian Genealogy Centre. The Centre is being developed in the context of the Canadian Culture Online strategy, put forth by the Government of Canada. The Centre offers a single window through which researchers are able to access genealogical resources across the country. These resources are offered by a network of partners working with the Centre to provide a wide range of products and services of interest to genealogists and family historians. These resources include databases found on the Centre's Web site, as well as links to the sites of the partners working with the Centre.

In creating this single-window access, the Canadian Genealogy Centre aims to realize the following goals:

• Contribute to the federal government strategy of providing opportunities for citizens to create online communities and to work together to develop Canadian cultural content, making it available on the Web.
• Provide the technical infrastructure within the resources of the Centre to allow the genealogical communities that have not yet been able to place their products and resources on the Web to do so, allowing them to share their information with all Canadians.
• Provide a site on the Web where genealogical products created by Canadian genealogical communities will remain under Canadian ownership and under the control of Canadian cultural institutions, while being shared by all at no cost. This consideration is important since commercial interests increasingly purchase Canadian genealogical content and products in order to make profits on the users fees that they charge for access.

Criteria

• The content proposed must be Canadian in nature or related to Canadians.
• The content, such as databases, research tools and digitized images, must be of interest to genealogists and family historians.
• The content must exist in an electronic format developed with commonly used and current technology, according to acceptable technical standards (i.e., can be read using standard software).
• The owner of the proposed content can be a department of the Government of Canada, a provincial or municipal government in Canada, a Canadian citizen, a Canadian non-profit society, association, consortium, foundation or other organization, or a network of organizations whose membership is composed of genealogists or family historians.
• The owner of the proposed content must demonstrate proof of ownership or copyright, as well as proof that there are no residual rights of diffusion attached thereto. In the case of a multi-phase project, the owner must demonstrate control of all phases of the project, and the capacity to deliver the content from all phases of the project under the same conditions, ensuring that the content of the entire project can be made easily accessible.
• The owner must demonstrate that the proposed content can be published in its entirety in accordance with the Privacy Act [http://laws.justice.gc.ca/en/P-21/index.html].
• The owner must demonstrate a lack of the technical infrastructure necessary to make the proposed content available on the Web.
• The owner must propose to make the product widely available to the public, including via the Internet, without cost.
• The owner must agree to find the necessary resources to complete the development of any content proposed for placement on the Web site of the Centre.
• The owner must agree to provide a copy or a sample extract of the product to the technical staff of the Centre for an evaluation of its electronic aspects, including the format of text and image files, the format of all indexes, its associated databases, and the search capabilities of the system or databases that are part of the product. The technical evaluation will be included in the review and approval process by the Centre.
• The length of contextual help texts will be defined in accordance with the Centre.
• The Centre will provide guidelines on the use of official languages for accessing and viewing the content.
• Ownership of the final product will be determined, as well as the terms for disposal or removal of the content from the Centre's site, if necessary.

Once the content has been reviewed, evaluated against these criteria and accepted as eligible for hosting on the Centre's Web site, the owner may enter into a partnership agreement with the Centre.

Do you have an idea for a project? Contact Us.