Digital dollars benefit libraries
Concordia’s digital library holdings in the social sciences and humanities are about to improve considerably, thanks to a $19-million grant from the Canada Foundation for Innovation (CFI).
The money will go to the Canadian Research Knowledge Network (CRKN), a consortium of 67 academic libraries. Concordia is one of 15 Quebec institutions that will benefit from the funding.
“This announcement demonstrates that CFI, which is an important research funding body, recognizes the importance of digital information as a necessary infrastructure for research,” said Jocelyn Godolphin, Assistant Director of Collection Services.
Over 50 per cent of researchers and students work within the social sciences and humanities. The benefits of this funding will be felt from Memorial University of Newfoundland right to the University of Victoria.
A similar amount was awarded by CFI almost a decade ago to the CRKN’s predecessor, CNSLP (the Canadian National Site Licensing Project), to finance scientific journals. It was a first.
“We never thought we could get the funds for social science and humanities research, because the field is so vast,” said Director of Libraries, Bill Curran.
“This shows that Canadian academic libraries have really got it together to apply for this funding and be successful,” Godolphin said.
The challenge will now be for the CRKN’s central office at the University of Ottawa to solicit suggestions from all 67 members, establish priorities and then negotiate with appropriate international digital journals, databases, and collections.
“The CRKN has recently enabled member libraries to add all the Sage journals, and ARTstor (a bank of digital images). And they are actively negotiating with publishers for other electronic collections,” Godolphin said. Because the 67 libraries negotiate as a group, they can get better prices from publishers.
In addition to journals, CRKN will be reviewing the needs of humanities and social sciences researchers for other kinds of digital information. Already on the table are statistical data, international news services, newspapers, social and political policy documents, images, and historic texts. For instance, the London Times is currently digitizing its entire archive. Similarly, collections of 18th and 19th century literature are being digitized.
Godolphin expects some additional collections to be available by the beginning of the fall term, accessible to researchers and students both on site and online.