In the last few years, there have been alarm bells in the information professional community over the loss of stewardship and access to Canadian government information. Information professionals look to federal and provincial governments, universities and colleges to provide access to government publications; yet there are still missing publications regardless of format. There has been a response among academics, librarians, archivists and other stakeholders with interests in publications to identify gaps and preservation in collections.
Government Information Day is one such response to the loss of stewardship and access to Canadian government information. The forum is a one day free event to "learn and share about the use, production, preservation and access of government information." Government Information Day East will be held on November 28th at the Toronto Reference Library.
CALL members are encouraged to read the recently published book, Government Information in Canada, Access and Stewardship, Edited by Amanda Wakaruk and Sam-chin Li to understand the magnitude of the issues facing the perilous preservation of government documents. The book is divided into three parts, part one gives historical overviews of Federal, LAC, Commissions and Tribunals; part two provides provincial landscape and part three gives collaborative stewardship solutions.
CALL member Amanda Wakaruk and co-editor Sam-chin Li have certainly answered the siren call as to the state of government information in Canada. Other CALL members contributing to the book are Caron Rollins and Martha Murphy.
The book is available in paperback and also as an Open Access PDF, which is available for download from University of Alberta Press website. Webpage for the book includes reviews and the table of contents. The page is here Government Information in Canada
This post is written on behalf of Government SIG
