Tag Archives: Memory Institutions and the Digital Revolution

Canada Science and Technology Museums Corporation welcomes Alex Benay as president and chief executive officer (CEO)

The search took over one year as the Canada Science and Technology Museums Corporation (CSTMC) cast about for a new president and CEO in the wake of previous incumbent Denise Amyot’s departure. From the June 17, 2014 CSTMC announcement,

The Canada Science and Technology Museums Corporation (CSTMC) welcomes the appointment by the Minister of Canadian Heritage and Official Languages, the Honourable Shelly Glover, of Alex Benay as its new President and CEO. Mr Benay will assume the role beginning July 2, 2014 for a 5-year term.

“This is excellent news,” said Dr Gary Polonsky, Chair of the CSTMC Board of Trustees. “Alex Benay is an exceptional leader with the capacity to heighten the CSTMC profile as the only national museum institution entirely dedicated to tracking Canada’s rich history and heritage in science, technology and innovation.”

“Alex’s appointment demonstrates the government’s support toward our museums”, added Dr Polonsky. “I wish to recognize Minister Glover’s leadership in this nomination process and express our gratitude for the appointment of a leader with vast experience in managing people, processes and resources. Alex’s significant networks in the private and public sectors in Canada and internationally, and leadership experience with Canada’s digital industry, will be great assets in developing the Corporation.”

Mr Benay was previously Vice-President, Government Affairs and Business Development at Open Text, Canada’s largest software company since 2011.

As President and CEO, Mr Benay will be responsible for the CSTMC’s day-to-day operations and a staff of about 225 employees and an annual budget of $33 million. The CSTMC includes the Canada Agriculture and Food Museum, the Canada Aviation and Space Museum, and the Canada Science and Technology Museum. Collectively, they are responsible for preserving and protecting Canada’s scientific and technological heritage, while also promoting, celebrating, and sharing knowledge of that heritage and how it impacts Canadians’ daily lives.

I took a look at Mr. Benay’s LinkedIn profile and found this,

President and Chief Executive Officer
Canada Science and Technology Museums Corporation

Government Agency; 201-500 employees; Museums and Institutions industry

June 2014 – Present (1 month) Ottawa, Canada Area

VP, Government Relations
OpenText

Public Company; 5001-10,000 employees; OTEX; Computer Software industry

August 2012 – June 2014 (1 year 11 months) Ottawa

VP, Enterprise Software and Cloud Services
Maplesoft Group

Privately Held; 51-200 employees; Information Technology and Services industry

March 2012 – August 2012 (6 months) Canada

VP, Government Relations
OpenText

Public Company; 5001-10,000 employees; OTEX; Computer Software industry

July 2011 – March 2012 (9 months) Ottawa, Ontario

Manage government relations including :
– trade relations
– trade promotion
– global strategic investment programs (G20, Commonwealth, etc.)
– senior level delegations and engagements
– manage government grant and industry investment programs
– Etc.

Provide company wide government thought leadership and strategic planning

Director, Industry Marketing
Open Text

Public Company; 5001-10,000 employees; OTEX; Computer Software industry

August 2010 – March 2012 (1 year 8 months) Ottawa, Ontario

Responsible for marketing and communication strategies for OpenText’s major industry sectors, enabling field sales and providing thought leadership in key priority sectors.

Director, Eastern Canadian Sales
Open Text

Public Company; 5001-10,000 employees; OTEX; Computer Software industry

January 2010 – August 2010 (8 months) Ottawa, Ontario

Responsible for all product, solutions and services sales for Ottawa, Québec and the Maritimes.

Senior Director, Customer Enablement
Open Text

Public Company; 5001-10,000 employees; OTEX; Computer Software industry

2009 – 2010 (1 year) Ottawa, Ontario

Responsible, throughout the Canadian public sector (including healtcare), for all professional services delivery, establishing a national training program, managing partner relations, pubic speaking engagements, technical support and overall existing customer relations.
Strong focus on strategic communications and planning throughout the Canadian Public Sector.

Director, Information Management
Canadian International Development Agency

Government Agency; 1001-5000 employees; Government Administration industry

2006 – 2009 (3 years) Gatineau, Québec

Responsible for all information and communications aspects within the organisation : enterprise technologies, communication strategies, strategic planning, etc. Including all policy, operational and management aspects of managing organisational information and knowledge

Director, Policy
Canadian International Development Agency

Government Agency; 1001-5000 employees; International Affairs industry

2004 – 2006 (2 years)

Define ICT policy framework for CIDA
coordinate with central agencies and other large multilateral organisations

Senior Program Manager
Canadian International Development Agency

Government Agency; 1001-5000 employees; International Affairs industry

2003 – 2004 (1 year)

Managed all information and communications elements for the Multilateral Programs Branch. Responsible for relations with United Nations, World Bank, etc.; ensuring all systems (technical and human) were properly enabling multilateral development; developed large and complex global engagement and communications strategies pertaining to Canadian multilateralism

Manager, Information, Communications and Knowledge Management
Natural Resources Canada

Government Agency; 1001-5000 employees; Government Administration industry

2001 – 2003 (2 years)

Responsible for the Energy Sector information, communication and knowledge management strategies, thought leadership, events, strategic planning and operational management.

Information Services Officer
Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade

2000 – 2001 (1 year)

Provide global briefing and communications support to various senior Foreign Affairs and International Trade Ministers, Deputy Ministers and Assistant Deputy Ministers

Medical Assistant
Canadian Armed Forces

Government Agency; 10,001+ employees; Military industry

1999 – 2001 (2 years)

Medical Assistant duties included : emergency response, first aid, suturing, orderly duties, basic military training, etc.

Archival Assistant
Library and Archives Canada

Government Agency; 1001-5000 employees; Government Administration industry

1998 – 2000 (2 years)

He certainly brings an interesting and peripatetic work history to the position. Given his previous work record and that he looks to be relatively young (I estimate he’s a few years shy of 40), my most optimistic prediction is that he will last five to six years in this job, assuming he makes it past his first six months.

Alex Benay, president and CEO of the Canada Science and Technology Museums Corporation

Alex Benay, president and CEO of the Canada Science and Technology Museums Corporation

Getting back to his work record, I’m not sure how Mr. Benay manged to be both an archival assistant for Library and Archives Canada and a medical assistant for the Canadian Armed Forces from 1999 – 2000. (Possibly he was working in the Reserves, which, as I understand it, requires weekends and the occasional longterm stint easily contained within one’s work vacation.) There is one other niggling thing, wouldn’t 1998 – 2000 be three years not two?

Interestingly, the company with which Benay has been most closely associated is OpenText whose Chairman, Tom Jenkins, led a  panel to review government funding programmes for research and development (R&D, a term often synonymous with science and technology). The resultant report is known familiarly as the Jenkins Report (Innovation Canada: A Call to Action; Review of Federal Support to R&D;–Expert Panel Report). I’m guessing Mr. Benay brings with him some important connections both corporately and governmentally, which could potentially extend to the University of British Columbia where Arvind Gupta (a member of Jenkins’ expert panel) is due to take up the reins as president when Stephen Toope officially vacates the position June 30, 2014.

I’m not sure how much insight one can derive from this March 6, 2014 article (for Canadian Government Executive) written by Mr. Benay while he was enjoying his second stint as VP Government Relations for Open Text,

With the rise of “smart power,” distinct from “hard” and “soft” power of traditional theories of international relations, the use of online collaboration has become an integral part of government communication.

Public sector employees who adopt partner-based collaboration models will find that they are able to effectively achieve their goals and generate results. Ideas shared through open-platform communication technologies, peer-to-peer networks, and enterprise-grade secure collaboration platforms can help foster greater dialogue and understanding between governments and citizens, ultimately leading to more effective attainment of foreign policy goals.

Increasingly, public-private partnerships are driving this new era of e-diplomacy.

As an example, governments worldwide are achieving tremendous success through their use of Public Service Without Borders (PSWB), the secure, cloud-enabled collaboration and social media environment developed in partnership with the Institute of Public Administration of Canada (IPAC).

Using secure social software solutions, PSWB helps to connect all levels of public service employees to one another to network, engage, share ideas and impart valuable lessons learned in such areas as governance, healthcare, technology and the environment. Whether via desktops or through mobile devices, participants can connect, network, plan and deliver exciting new partnerships and initiatives anytime, from anywhere in the world. This online collaboration platform ultimately fosters better, faster and more efficient services to all constituencies.

Another case in point is the G-20 Summit in Toronto. For the first time in history, policymakers from around the world were able to collaborate over secure social networking software in advance of and during the Toronto G-20 Summit. A confidential and secure social networking application was created to enhance the sharing of government leaders’ stances on important world financial issues. [emphasis mine]

Providing the secure, hosted social networking platform to G-8 and G-20 participants was in itself a collaboration between Open Text, the Canadian Digital Media Network (CDMN) – the organization that attracted high-tech companies to the event – and the then-called Canadian Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade (DFAIT). [emphasis mine] In addition to secure Web access from anywhere in the world in real time, delegates were also able to access the application from their BlackBerrys, iPhones and iPads. The application supported multiple languages to enhance the ability of delegates to network productively.

The leap from ‘soft power’ in paragraphs one and two  to ‘public-private partnerships’ in paragraph three is a bit startling and suggests Benay’s tendency is towards ‘big picture’ thinking buttressed by a weakness for jumping from one idea to the next without much preparation. This is not a deal breaker as all leaders have weaknesses and a good one knows that sort of thing about him or herself so compensates for it.

Benay’s association with OpenText and, presumably, Jenkins suggests * strongly, when added to his article on public-private partnerships, that the CSTMC museums will be corporatized to a new degree. After all, it was Jenkins who delivered a report with recommendations to tie research funding more directly to business and economic needs. (This report was submitted to then Minister of State for Science and Technology, Gary Goodyear on Oct. 17, 2011 according to this Review of Federal Support to Research and Development  website. For those unfamiliar with the Canadian science and technology scene, this is considered a junior ministry and is part of the Industry Canada portfolio.) Since 2011, a number of these recommendations have been adopted, often accompanied by howls of despair (this May 22, 2013 posting delves into some of the controversies,which attracted attention by US observers).

I am somewhat intrigued by Benay’s experience with content management and digital media. I’m hopeful he will be using that experience to make some changes at the CSTMC such that it offers richer online and outreach experiences in the museums (Canada Agriculture and Food Museum, the Canada Aviation and Space Museum, and the Canada Science and Technology Museum) for those of us who are not resident in Ottawa. Amyot, during her* tenure, made some attempts (my Oct. 28, 2010 posting makes note of one such attempt) but they failed to take root for reasons not known* to me.

Returning to Benay’s old boss for a moment, Tom Jenkins has some connections of his own with regard to digital media and the military (from the OpenText Board of Directors page) ,

Mr. Jenkins was Chair of the Government of Canada’s military procurement review Panel which reported “Canada First: Leveraging Defence Procurement through Key Industrial Sectors (KICs) in February 2013 and reviewed the $490 Billion of federal public spending on defence to determine means by which the Canadian economy could benefit from military procurement.   Mr. Jenkins was Chair of the Government of Canada’s Research and Development Policy Review Panel which reported “Innovation Canada: A Call to Action” in October 2011 and reviewed the $7 Billion of federal public spending on research to assist the Canadian economy in becoming more innovative.   He was also chair of the November 2011 report to the Government of Canada on Innovation and Government Procurement.  He is also the Chair of the federal centre of excellence Canadian Digital Media Network (CDMN) which co-ordinates commercialization activity in the digital economy throughout Canada.  He is a member of the Canadian Government’s Advisory Panel on Open Government.  He is also an appointed member of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC), past appointed member of the Government of Canada’s Competition Policy Review Panel (the Wilson Panel) which reported “Compete to Win” in June 2008, and past appointed member of the Province of Ontario’s Ontario Commercialization Network Review Committee (OCN) which reported in February 2009.  … Mr. Jenkins is also one of the founders of Communitech – the Waterloo Region Technology Association.  Mr. Jenkins served as a commissioned officer in the Canadian Forces Reserve and he currently serves as Honorary Colonel of the Royal Highland Fusiliers of Canada (RHFC), a reserve infantry regiment in the Waterloo Region. [emphases mine]

Meanwhile, Mr. Benay’s appointment takes place within a larger context where the Council of Canadian Academies will be presenting two assessments with direct bearing on the CSTMC. The first, which is scheduled for release in 2014, is The State of Canada’s Science Culture (an assessment requested by the CSTMC which much later was joined by Industry Canada and Natural Resources Canada). The assessment is featured in my Feb. 22, 2013 posting titled: Expert panel to assess the state of Canada’s science culture—not exactly whelming. I will predict now that a main focus of this report will be on children, STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics, and the economy (i.e., how do we get more children to study STEM topics?). Following on that thought, what better to way to encourage children than to give them good experiences with informal science education (code for science museums and centres).

The second assessment is called Memory Institutions and the Digital Revolution and was requested by Library and Archives Canada (museums too perform archival functions). in the context of a Jan. 30,2014 posting about digitizing materials in Fisheries and Oceans Canada libraries I excerpted this from an earlier posting,

Library and Archives Canada has asked the Council of Canadian Academies to assess how memory institutions, which include archives, libraries, museums, and other cultural institutions, can embrace the opportunities and challenges of the changing ways in which Canadians are communicating and working in the digital age.

Background

Over the past three decades, Canadians have seen a dramatic transformation in both personal and professional forms of communication due to new technologies. Where the early personal computer and word-processing systems were largely used and understood as extensions of the typewriter, advances in technology since the 1980s have enabled people to adopt different approaches to communicating and documenting their lives, culture, and work. Increased computing power, inexpensive electronic storage, and the widespread adoption of broadband computer networks have thrust methods of communication far ahead of our ability to grasp the implications of these advances.

These trends present both significant challenges and opportunities for traditional memory institutions as they work towards ensuring that valuable information is safeguarded and maintained for the long term and for the benefit of future generations. It requires that they keep track of new types of records that may be of future cultural significance, and of any changes in how decisions are being documented. As part of this assessment, the Council’s expert panel will examine the evidence as it relates to emerging trends, international best practices in archiving, and strengths and weaknesses in how Canada’s memory institutions are responding to these opportunities and challenges. Once complete, this assessment will provide an in-depth and balanced report that will support Library and Archives Canada and other memory institutions as they consider how best to manage and preserve the mass quantity of communications records generated as a result of new and emerging technologies.

The Council’s assessment is running concurrently with the Royal Society of Canada’s [RSC] expert panel assessment on Libraries and Archives in 21st century Canada. Though similar in subject matter, these assessments have a different focus and follow a different process. The Council’s assessment is concerned foremost with opportunities and challenges for memory institutions as they adapt to a rapidly changing digital environment. In navigating these issues, the Council will draw on a highly qualified and multidisciplinary expert panel to undertake a rigorous assessment of the evidence and of significant international trends in policy and technology now underway. The final report will provide Canadians, policy-makers, and decision-makers with the evidence and information needed to consider policy directions. In contrast, the RSC panel focuses on the status and future of libraries and archives, and will draw upon a public engagement process.

While this could be considered a curse, these are interesting times.

* ‘a’ removed from ‘a strongly’ and ‘strongly’ moved to closer proximity with ‘suggests’, ‘her’ added to ‘her tenure’ and ‘know’ corrected to ‘known’ on June 19, 2014 at 1200 hours PDT.

Shocker! Science data being lost at a disturbing rate

A Dec. 19, 2013 University of British Columbia (Vancouver, Canada) news release (on EurekAlert) provides a shock for anyone unfamiliar with the problems of accessing ‘old’ data,

Eighty per cent of scientific data are lost within two decades, according to a new study that tracks the accessibility of data over time.

The culprits? Old e-mail addresses and obsolete storage devices.

“Publicly funded science generates an extraordinary amount of data each year,” says Tim Vines, a visiting scholar at the University of British Columbia. “Much of these data are unique to a time and place, and is thus irreplaceable, and many other datasets are expensive to regenerate.

“The current system of leaving data with authors means that almost all of it is lost over time, unavailable for validation of the original results or to use for entirely new purposes.”

For the analysis, published today in Current Biology, Vines and colleagues attempted to collect original research data from a random set of 516 studies published between 1991 and 2011. They found that while all datasets were available two years after publication, the odds of obtaining the underlying data dropped by 17 per cent per year after that.

“I don’t think anybody expects to easily obtain data from a 50-year-old paper, but to find that almost all the datasets are gone at 20 years was a bit of a surprise.”

Vines is calling on scientific journals to require authors to upload data onto public archives as a condition for publication, adding that papers with readily accessible data are more valuable for society and thus should get priority for publication.

“Losing data is a waste of research funds and it limits how we can do science,” says Vines. “Concerted action is needed to ensure it is saved for future research.”

Unfortunately, there’s nothing about the research methodology in the news release. It would be nice to know how the researchers approached the topic and whether or not they focused on biological sciences and are generalizing those results to all of the sciences,including the social sciences. It is likely more or less true of all the sciences as there is a major issue with being able to access data over time. Whether or not the researcher can provide access to the data set, which is a problem in itself, there’s also the issue of obsolete hardware, software, and formats, problems that haunt the arts, the sciences, and the humanities, as well as, business and government. One of my more recent postings about the issue of archiving data is this March 8, 2012 posting and there’s this March 9, 2010 posting (I believe it was my first on the topic). I also mentioned the current Council of Canadian Academies assessment Memory Institutions and the Digital Revolution in a June 5, 2013 posting.

Here’s a link to and a citation for the UBC study,

The Availability of Research Data Declines Rapidly with Article Age by Timothy H. Vines, Arianne Y.K. Albert, Rose L. Andrew, Florence Débarre, Dan G. Bock, Michelle T. Franklin, Kimberly J. Gilbert, Jean-Sébastien Moore, Sébastien Renaut, Diana J. Rennison. Current Biology, 19 December 2013 DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2013.11.014
Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Ltd All rights reserved.

This paper is behind a paywall.

Digital world and the Cleveland Museum of Art

If this project is as advertised, then the Cleveland Museum of Art has developed a truly exciting interactive experience. Cliff Kuang in his Mar. 6, 2013 article for Fast Company is definitely enthusiastic,

If you’re a youngster, why stare at a Greek urn when you could blow one up in a video game? One institution thinking deeply about the challenge is the Cleveland Museum of Art, which this month unveiled a series of revamped galleries, designed by Local Projects, which feature cutting-edge interactivity. But the technology isn’t the point. “We didn’t want to create a tech ghetto,” says David Franklin, the museum’s director. Adds Local Projects founder Jake Barton, “We wanted to make the tech predicated on the art itself.”

Put another way, the new galleries at CMA tackle the problem plaguing most ambitious UI projects today: How do you let the content shine, and get the tech out of the way? How do you craft an interaction between bytes and spaces that feels fun?

The Cleveland Museum of Art’s Jan. 14, 2013 news release describes the new project,

… Gallery One, a unique, interactive gallery that blends art, technology and interpretation to inspire visitors to explore the museum’s renowned collections. This revolutionary space features the largest multi-touch screen in the United States, which displays images of over 3,500 objects from the museum’s world-renowned permanent collection. This 40-foot Collection Wall allows visitors to shape their own tours of the museum and to discover the full breadth of the collections on view throughout the museum’s galleries.

Throughout the space, original works of art and digital interactives engage visitors in new ways, putting curiosity, imagination and creativity at the heart of their museum experience. Innovative user-interface design and cutting-edge hardware developed exclusively for Gallery One break new ground in art museum interpretation, design and technology.

“Technology is a vital tool for supporting visitor engagement with the collection,” adds C. Griffith Mann, Deputy Director and Chief Curator. “Putting the art experience first required an unprecedented partnership between the museum’s curatorial, design, education and technology staff.”

Comprised of three major areas, Gallery One offers something for visitors of all ages and levels of comfort with art. Studio Play is a bright and colorful space that offers the museum’s youngest visitors and their families a chance to play and learn about art. Highlights of this portion of Gallery One include: Line and Shape, a multi-touch, microtile wall on which visitors can draw lines that are matched to works of art in the collection; a shadow-puppet theater where silhouettes of objects can be used as “actors” in plays; mobile- and sculpture-building stations where visitors can create their own interpretations of modern sculptures by Calder [Alexander Calder] and Lipchitz [Jacques Lipchitz]; and a sorting and matching game featuring works from the permanent collection. This space is designed to encourage visitors of all ages to become active participants in their museum experience.

In the main gallery space, visitors have an opportunity to learn about the collection and to develop ways of looking at art that are both fun and educational. The gallery is comprised of fourteen themed groups of works from the museum’s collection, six of which have “lens” stations. The “lens” stations comprise 46” multi-touch screens that offer additional contextual information and dynamic, interactive activities that allow visitors to create experiences and share them with others through links to social media. Another unique feature of the space is the Beacon, an introductory, dynamic screen that displays real-time results of visitors’ activities in the space, such as favorite objects, tours and activities.

The largest multi-touch screen in the United States, the Collection Wall utilizes innovative technology to allow visitors to browse these works of art on the Wall, facilitating discovery and dialogue with other visitors. The Collection Wall can also serve as an orientation experience, allowing visitors to download existing tours or curate their own tours to take out into the galleries on iPads. The Collection Wall, as well as the other interactive in the gallery, illustrates the museum’s long-term investment in technology to enhance visitor access to factual and interpretative information about the permanent collection.

“The Collection Wall powerfully demonstrates how cutting-edge technology can inspire our visitors to engage with our collection in playful and original ways never before seen on this scale,” said Jane Alexander, Director of Information Management and Technology Services. “This space, unique among art museums internationally, will help make the Cleveland Museum of Art a destination museum.”

In concert with the opening of Gallery One, the museum has also created ArtLens, a multi-dimensional app for iPads. Utilizing image recognition software, visitors can scan two-dimensional objects in Gallery One and throughout the museum’s galleries to access up to 9 hours of additional multimedia content, including audio tour segments, videos and additional contextual information. Indoor triangulation-location technology also allows visitors to orient themselves in the galleries and find works of art with additional interpretive content throughout their visit.

“ArtLens allows the visitor to take the experience of Gallery One out in to the other areas of the museum,” said Caroline Goeser. “It brings in many voices and traditions from different cultures, as well as giving visitors a chance to see demonstrations of art making techniques by local artists. The content is layered so visitors can choose what interests them and discover new ways of looking at and interpreting the object. Their experience is guided by their own sense of curiosity and discovery.”

It’s interesting to note the companies that partnered with the museum and to note the source for the money supporting this effort (from the news release),

The museum partnered with several other companies to complete the project, including Local Projects (media design and development), Gallagher and Associates (design and development), Zenith (AV Integration), Piction (CMS/DAM development), Earprint Productions (app content development), and Navizon (way-finding).

Gallery One is generously supported by the Maltz Family Foundation, which donated $10 million to support the project. Additional support for the project comes from grants and other donations.

Kuang’s article makes the exhibits come alive,

The first gallery that many new visitors will see, Gallery One, is a signature space, meant to draw in a younger crowd. To that end, the exhibits are about fostering an intuitive understanding of the art. Which sounds like baloney, but the end results are quietly terrific. At the root, the exhibits encourage people to move, fostering a connection to the art that’s literally written on the body:

  • In one display, a computer analyzes the expression on a visitor’s face. Then, they can see work spanning thousands of years that matches their own visage.
  • Gallery One also offers a chance to directly experience the physical decisions behind how masterpieces are made. For example, in front of a Jackson Pollack painting is a virtual easel, loaded with tools that approximate Pollock’s own, so that visitors can pour their own drip painting and compare it to the real thing.

Sounds like very exciting stuff. For anyone who can’t visit the exhibit, there are videos including this one where visitors strike a pose and an image (from the collection) mimicking the pose appears {ETA Mar.6.13 4:35 pm PST: I got this the wrong way round, the museum presents you with a piece of art and you strike the same p0se),

Sculpture Lens – Strike A Pose – Cleveland Museum of Art from Local Projects on Vimeo.

Kuang covers that exhibit and much more in his article, which I strongly recommend reading, and he makes this point,

Even as the designers go wild with the technology, they never stop to consider what anyone who doesn’t care about that technology would stand to gain. It was Barton’s [Local Projects founder Jake Barton] own skepticism about technology that made the technology great. His team didn’t necessarily believe that high-tech flare would add value to the museum experience. So they strove to look past the technology.

As a technical writer, I had many, many arguments with developers about precisely that point; most of us don’t care about the technology.  So, kudos to Jake Barton and all of the teams responsible for finding a way to integrate that understanding into a series of exhibits that allow the museum to showcase its collection, engage the public, and develop new audiences.

Meanwhile, the Council of Canadian Academies is poised to embark on an assessment which examines museums and other memory institutions along with digital technology from an entirely different perspective, Memory Institutions and the Digital Revolution,

Library and Archives Canada has asked the Council of Canadian Academies to assess how memory institutions, which includes archives, libraries, museums, and other cultural institutions, can embrace the opportunities and challenges of the changing ways in which Canadians are communicating and working in the digital age.

These trends present both significant challenges and opportunities for traditional memory institutions as they work towards ensuring that valuable information is safeguarded and maintained for the long term and for the benefit of future generations. It requires that they keep track of new types of records that may be of future cultural significance, and of any changes in how decisions are being documented. As part of this assessment, the Council’s expert panel will examine the evidence as it relates to emerging trends, international best practices in archiving, and strengths and weaknesses in how Canada’s memory institutions are responding to these opportunities and challenges. Once complete, this assessment will provide an in-depth and balanced report that will support Library and Archives Canada and other memory institutions as it considers how best to manage and preserve the mass quantity of communications records generated as a result of new and emerging technologies.

I last mentioned the ‘memory institutions’ assessment in my Feb. 22, 2013 posting in the context of their ‘science culture in Canada’ assessment panel. I find it odd that the Canada Science and Technology Museums Corporation was one of the requestors for the ‘science culture’ assessment but it  is not involved (nor is any other museum) in the ‘memory institutions and digital revolution’ assessment.

After reading about the Cleveland Museum of Art project, something else strikes me as odd, there is no mention of analysing the role that museums, libraries, and others will play in a world which is increasingly ephemeral. After all, it’s not enough to keep and store records. There is no point  if we can’t access them or even have knowledge of their existence. As for storing and displaying objects, this traditional museum function is increasingly being made impossible as objects seemingly disappear. The vinyl record, cassette tape, and CD (compact disc) have almost disappeared to be replaced by digital files. Meanwhile, my local library has fewer and fewer books, DVDs, and other lending items. What roles will libraries, museums, and other memory institutions going to have in our lives?