Minutes of the Depository Services Program Advisory Committee teleconference, October 27, 2016

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Teleconference date

October 27, 2016

Publishing and Depository Services Directorate (PDSD) representatives

List of participants

Absent

Participating observers

Meeting summary

  1. Opening remarks by Marc Saint-Pierre. Marc reminded members of the changes that were made to the Terms of Reference since the last DSP–AC and welcomed new members. Marc also announced the departure of our Director Angus O’Leary and introduced the new Director Julie Couture. Julie made introductory remarks
  2. Minutes from the February 3rd, 2016 teleconference approved
  3. Chantal provided an update on Open Information.
    1. TBS participated at the International Conference on Open Data in Spain on October 4th, 2016
    2. TBS is working on creating guidance documents on how to create accessible documents
    3. Alannah confirmed the Open Information Portal (OIP) was re-launched on October 12th, 2016. It was noted that information products made available on the OIP will need to meet specific criteria, such as: items must be available and posted in both official languages, they must meet the standard on web accessibility, and have proper approvals for release under the Open Government License. In 2014, both LAC and PDSD agreed to have their collection on the OIP. Due to the new OIP criteria, TBS recently removed the collections from LAC and PDSD from the portal. TBS is currently developing a work plan on how to deal with legacy publications. TBS would also like to draft an Information Management Protocol on Publishing Open Government resources along with a criteria checklist.  Julie indicated that a link to PDSD’s collection as well as LAC’s collection is provided on the OIP portal and the publications.gc.ca site will continue to remain active
    4. Siobhan questioned the removal of publications from the OIP. Chantal explained how LAC and PDSD’s collections did not meet all TBS requirements related to portability, copyright, language and accessibility. For these reasons, TBS made a decision to withdraw all of these publications
    5. Chantal indicated that a collaborative approach will be necessary from all government departments in order to make the OIP a success
    6. Caron asked Alannah if she could release the criteria. Alannah explained that she is developing Information Management protocols and is drafting clear guidelines on data and information. Alannah confirmed she would be sending an email to the group with the details once they have all necessary approvals
    7. Carla enquired about the meaning of legacy products. Alannah explained that legacy products are products that were developed in the past, for example before the Official Languages Act, web accessibility standards, etc. Information products can be documents, publications, photographs or basically anything with a tangible outcome
    8. Graeme indicated that because of the re-launch and the removal of all legacy data, The Open Information Portal is left with only 55 products. Alannah confirmed that the reason behind the number of products on the OIP is because of the strict guidelines. Chantal explained how this will be a big culture change for everyone. Chantal also explained that for the re-launch, PDSD had to find products that had an HTML (accessible version) and PDF (long shelf life) version
    9. Caron wanted to know how there could be copyright issues on the OIP. Alannah explained that there are two different licenses: Open Government License and Crown Copyright licensing. Going forward, anything added to the Open Information Portal must fall under the Open Government License which allows anyone to use all information for both commercial and non-commercial purposes. Departments deal with copyright in various ways. Legacy publications often require users to request for permission to reproduce information for commercial purposes whereas the Open Licenses allows users to reproduce information for any purpose. This therefore causes confusion to users. There may also be other copyright restrictions related to pictures or artwork in legacy publications and as a result these publications are not eligible for inclusion in the Open Information Portal. Treasury Board of Canada and individual departments will need to develop strategies for older Government of Canada publications products
  4. Client satisfaction survey
    1. Chantal informed members of PDSD’s decision to conduct a client satisfaction survey. The first phase will be an online bulletin board (focus group) and the second phase will be an online survey
    2. PDSD has not conducted a client satisfaction survey since 2010. Chantal encourages members to take this opportunity to participate and provide honest, transparent and vocal feedback
    3. A firm responsible in conducting the survey will soon be recruiting participants at random for the bulletin board which should start on October 31st. PDSD is hoping the online survey will be launched in November but cannot confirm at this point in time
    4. Chantal also talked about the Government of Canada website re-skin driven by TBS requirements. This means PDSD’s website will have a new look and feel. We are expecting these changes will be implemented by April 2017. All members are encouraged to provide PDSD with feedback on things that are working or not working well
  5. Historical Weekly and Supplementary Checklist digitization
    1. Chantal confirmed a message was sent through Infodep to advise members of the digitization of the checklists which she considers a very important project for PDSD. She talked about the importance of being able to see what the Government of Canada was publishing at various periods. The project saw the digitization of checklists dating back to Caron, Siobhan and Graeme all agreed it was very nice to have access to these checklists and be able to travel back in time
  6. Weekly Acquisitions List (WAL) redesign
    1. Melissa talked about the work PDSD has been doing to implement changes to the WAL. A focus group with various stakeholders identified areas for improvement. Melissa identified the following planned changes to the WAL:
      • Reinstate the hyperlinked Table of Contents
      • Add a filter functionality
      • Consolidate all URLs under one bibliographic record
      • Implement a customizable MARC21 file for download (.mrc and xml)
      • Update record display
      • Ability to differentiate multiple URLs in monograph records with a note
    2. Graeme inquired about importing records to his institution’s system. Since LAC doesn’t always create new records for serial issues, it might be useful to have a downloadable file. Caron also indicated it would be useful to have a separate downloadable file for separate serial records. Melissa asked if the customizable MARC21 file that will be added to the WAL will cover these needs. Caron and Graeme agreed that this would suffice
    3. Graeme noted an issue with the usability of PDSD’s MARC records on the WAL. Melissa responded that PDSD did have an issue with the MARC records but believes it was fixed a few months ago. Melissa will follow-up on this issue. Chantal noted that PDSD would send a message on Infodep with this confirmation and invited members to point out any issues as they arise
    4. The re-design will hopefully be completed by March 31st, 2017
  7. Statistics Canada project
    1. Carlie indicated that the WAL has multiple Statistics Canada (StatCan) publications due to the fact that StatCan is digitizing a historical amount of publications. So far 80,000 publications have been received and PDSD expects another 38,000. PDSD has catalogued 65,000 of these publications. 1300 of which are monograph records
    2. PDSD has increased resources in order to complete the cataloguing by the end of 2017
    3. Chantal indicated that when they met StatCan, they discussed cataloguing 118,000 publications and committed to completing this project in two years. This is a great collaboration between departments and this project will surely benefit the library community
    4. Caron asked StatCan if the publications were available on the StatCan website. Jennifer responded that they are not on the website but the future plan is to make the links from PDSD available from the StatCan Library’s online catalogue, which is available through the StatCan website. DSP will host these publications; therefore it will be a DSP PURL available through the StatCan Library’s catalogue record
    5. Carla asked if that was the same collection as the Digital Libraries Initiative. It was confirmed that this was not related
    6. Jennifer mentioned that StatCan is celebrating a centennial in 2018
    7. Graeme asked about all the added resources in the past year and if PDSD has had a continued association with LOCKSS. PDSD is working with both the Government and Legislative Libraries Online Publications Portal (GALLOP) and LOCKSS to update their holdings with our publications. Chantal noted that PDSD feels strongly about keeping Government of Canada information safe and that it fully supports these safety nets
  8. Federal Science Library
    1. Stephen Sekerak introduced the Federal Science Library (FSL) as a partnership of seven science-based organizations (Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, Fisheries and Oceans Canada, Environment and Climate Change Canada, Health Canada, National Research Council Canada, Natural Resources Canada and Public Health Agency Canada). The library serves approximately 45,000 Government of Canada employees and has a limited public portal
    2. It was noted that Stephen and his team with the Federal Science Library have begun collaborations with PDSD to have their publications indexed by Summon, a discovery service from ProQuest
    3. Summon provides a discovery layer making it possible to index metadata from various collections
    4. Several members of the Committee noted that they use Summon as well and expressed great interest in accessing PDSD’s collection, as well as that of other government departments, using this tool
    5. Any Summon customer could potentially have access to collections where this indexing service has been activated
    6. Stephen indicated he could organize a presentation for those members who expressed an interest in accessing collections currently available from government departments
    7. Michelle mentioned she has Ebsco but would be interested if it was available in other platforms. Stephen explained she would probably need to work with her Ebsco vendor. Carla indicated that the vendor would probably be interested in doing this
  9. Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting (OAI-PMH)
    1. Melissa noted that PDSD is exploring implementing OAI-PMH. Chantal explained that this would allow the harvesting of metadata in the PDSD collection allowing anybody to harvest PDSD’s records
  10. Questions, answers and follow-ups
    1. Caron informed us that the Privy Council Office (PCO) has worked on a digitization project for supplementary Commission of Inquiry material. Caron has 200 research reports. PCO has digitized all material related to the Royal Commission reports. PCO will be sending all these reports to PDSD. Chantal indicated that we should invite Celine Legault from PCO at the next DSP–AC meeting. 
      • The reports from PCO fall under the copyright for non-commercial purposes. (Royal Commissions, speeches from former Prime Ministers)
      • Chantal asked Caron if she could share the list of items from PCO. Caron will forward Celine’s email to PDSD
      • Graeme inquired if these items are available on PCO’s website. Caron responded that they are not available yet but predicts that she should have them available in her catalogue by Christmas
    2. Caron shared information about LexBox, a free Google Chrome extension from Lexum (Montréal) that links and stores webpages for legal research. It currently works with the website of the Supreme Court of Canada, Justice Canada, CanLII, BC Laws among others. A suggestion was made that perhaps the PDSD collection could also be accessed through Lexbox.  Chantal indicated that PDSD will explore this option
    3. Carla and others expressed their gratitude for the DSP–AC. Lots of information and good news was shared
    4. Making reference to a magazine only published in HTML, Graeme asked if it would be possible to catalogue HTML publications from LAC. He wanted to know if PDSD had any interest in this. Chantal responded that HTML has a short life span and wasn’t sure PDSD could take this on as a new format. Chantal asked Graeme to send the links and PDSD could explore this further
  11. Next meeting
    1. Julie thanked all participants for a very productive meeting. She indicated that the next meeting would be in February 2017
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