Canadian Heritage committee  They could get it off the Internet, or at least they would know we have material. They would call us and we would tell them what we have.

Canadian Heritage committee  It's a more direct interface with Canadian citizens.

Canadian Heritage committee  First, we are not decentralizing; we are federating. I think it is very important to make that distinction. I have been working since the beginning with the Canadian Historical Association, the Canadian Association of Research Libraries, the Association of Canadian Archivists, th

Canadian Heritage committee  I would have to go into more detail about the criteria. I don't have all the details with me, but we have a model that applies. So it has to be Canadian; it has to be of national significance. That, for us, is very important. So we are focusing on what is of national significance

Canadian Heritage committee  That's a very good question, and it brings me to one of the points I made earlier: we need to make known what we have in our vaults. Maybe we have material on this specifically and it's unknown because it's not described, not findable. So we acquire material, but it's not necessa

Canadian Heritage committee  We will with the statement of documentary intent. We'll say, okay, we have a void here in—I don't know—1940 to 1945 on this topic, so we're interested in getting material.

Canadian Heritage committee  We are reviewing all the business processes. We were just talking about one major element, which is the acquisition. How do we acquire material? We were reactive; we're going proactive. One of the reasons for that is if we want to be representative of all the documentary heritage

Canadian Heritage committee  There will always be holes in the collection. But to correct, I don't think it's harder. It has always been difficult, and it will always be difficult, because when these things go to Sotheby's, there are a lot of very rich people who are bidding. In fact what we have resolved

Canadian Heritage committee  The things we will be implementing will develop over the next few months. We serve a fairly specific client base made up of PhD or master's students, and genealogists. We have very specific and particular niches. However, since I have held my position, it has been my dream for i

Canadian Heritage committee  Absolutely. The web is one avenue, but we also want to be present. We call it records on wheels. What we want to do is bring the real stuff, the material. We're using the library network, because there's always a tension between what you put out and how you preserve. Internally,

Canadian Heritage committee  We work with our collections. We do not create or interpret. We try to offer the best possible representation of what has been done in the past. With that in mind, we regularly consult our portfolio partners who provide us with ideas. In addition, our experts tell us where to fin

Canadian Heritage committee  Our omnibus legislation does not apply to that. So I would have to look at the data on it. In addition, we discard many records because they have no historic value, especially the case files. If we were to keep those, it would be a monumental task.

Canadian Heritage committee  Well, we're not in the museum business, but all the archival material, as we speak, is being treated the same way across the country. Let me explain. Through the stakeholders' forum I started two years ago, we're creating working groups across the country to support each other,

Canadian Heritage committee  We're working on two fronts. There are two broad baskets of investments we are currently making. You probably know that we just opened a nitrate film facility in Ottawa. It was an investment of $18 million. Now nitrate film and photographs are taken care of. The solution is there

Canadian Heritage committee  It's not becoming more decentralized, it's becoming more organized as a portal for the entire nation. I would go further and say that I am discussing with the Mexicans and the Americans to have an Americana portal, like they have an Europeana one. We are, in fact, connecting the