Canadian history sitting in piles of unsorted boxes

Canada’s Auditor-General has released the fall 2014 report on government activities.

Among the many findings were serious failings in the gathering, sorting and archiving of Canada’s records and items of historical and heritage interest.

In chapter 7 of the report Micheal Ferguson listed a number of concerns with Library and Archives Canada, the government agency directed to acquire and preserve government documentary heritage, and other items of historical and heritage importance, and to make them available to current and future generations.

Of the concerns was the fact that as of April 2014, the agency had 98,000 boxes of unsorted materials including text records, maps, microfiches, digital records, and sound recordings from several different departments, some of which had remained unsorted for over a decade.

These include 24,000 boxes of military records, with some records dating back well over a century.

The report says the tens of thousands of boxes will all have to be sorted by hand to find out what is in them as records are often incomplete and even documented materials can be difficult to locate as the “finding aids” about an item’s existence, description, location, and availability also vary in quality.

The agency also had not updated is directives to the majority of government agencies it is supposed to collect information from, such that much of the material it is supposed to gather from those agencies has not been done, in some cases, decades.

The record keeping agency has no record of its own decision 

Another finding in Ferguson’s report noted that in 2006 Library and Archives Canada

received approval to create a “trusted digital repository” for storage and preservation of digital records. After spending more than $15 million on the system, it was shut down in 2012, apparently citing a change in approach from a “customer-developed solution and was planning to implement a hybrid approach, which would include a commercially available solution”

However, the record-keeping agency was shut down apparently “without documentation from management on the rationale for the decision,”

The report also expresses concern about the digital future saying the agency which says the digital format will be its preferred platform by 2017 has no plan in place to deal with a massive influx of digital data

Library and Archives Canada accepted the findings and recommendations and said it will come up with plans to address the concerns, including a plan for digital files which is said will be ready by March 2015