Library of Parliament committee  We have a collection development policy that guides most of our decisions along certain lines, including subject area. We do have the latitude to acquire things on request for addition into the collection provided that they would meet the long-term use of the collection along those subject lines.

Library of Parliament committee  The technology exists. The library owns the technology. The process to reverse-engineer accessibility into something that we receive in print is really quite labour intensive and was something that was difficult for us to undertake given those previous resourcing limitations in the time we had between 2014 and our appearance here today.

Library of Parliament committee  I can't necessarily speak from the perspective of the government departments submitting the content. I'm unable to answer that question.

Library of Parliament committee  Yes.

Library of Parliament committee  Many of our electronic subscriptions are governed by a user license agreement, and we respect those user license agreements. Most of those are scoped based on a client base, a number we provide to the vendor, and then that will partly determine the subscription price. We do report our user base to those vendors, and we use the resources within the restrictions of those licensing limitations.

Library of Parliament committee  We're certainly very aware, and discuss copyright internally at the library. We do contribute, as well, to Access Copyright, which is a Government of Canada level licence for use of content. We are a library, and we have some provisions under fair dealing in copyright.

Library of Parliament committee  Making documents accessible is a question of technology. Accessibility requirements have to do largely with metadata tagging. Those tags provide instructions to adaptive technologies to instruct the technology how to read the content, which makes it easier for somebody with a print disability to navigate and interpret the content.

Library of Parliament committee  That's correct.

Library of Parliament committee  Two people work on digitization in my team. In addition, one team works on description and metadata. The manager of that team did the study on what we would need to make those documents accessible. I think it took two months to do the research on the accessibility standards and to test the ways of changing the documents to make them accessible.

Library of Parliament committee  The most similar case I know is that of England. There is indeed a tabling process right from the beginning, in the departments. That process is exactly what House of Commons colleagues would like to see.

Library of Parliament committee  We can make them available. It will take a small technical change, but there is a risk related to accessibility requirements that we'd like the committee to understand. These scanned versions don't meet the accessibility requirements, and that can result in a human rights complaint.

Library of Parliament committee  As a librarian—

Library of Parliament committee  What seems to be envisaged right now is that they'll be available through the journals and will be potentially searchable within a separate database as well, although we're in a preliminary phase of that project.

Library of Parliament committee  Going to the source of the document so that you're dealing with a document that's born digitally is much more efficient than having a library that receives a second or third generation print version try to reverse-engineer accessibility into that file. In terms of efficiency and use of those resources, it's much more efficient to go to the source and deal with documents as they're born digitally.

Library of Parliament committee  Thank you for your question. It is clear that, in the publication world, information has to be purchased. Quality information is not free. We rely on quality information, and there is, of course, a cost related to that. With the model where collections are purchased, especially digital collections, the main issue is the price of membership, which is paid every year.