DPR 2005-2006
Library and Archives Canada

Minister's Message

As Minister of Canadian Heritage and Status of Women, I present Library and Archives Canada's (LAC) 2005-2006 Departmental Performance Report (DPR) to Parliament and to Canadians. This report represents a major step forward for LAC, a detailed record of the activities and achievements of an institution that is no longer in transition, but working towards the realization of its mandate, offering new services to Canadians and providing greater access to our national heritage.

Through systems integration and improvements LAC has enhanced its capacity to serve Canadians of all ages and cultures, wherever they live.

A great deal of work was carried out behind the scenes during the evolution of this new organization.

Beverley J. Oda

Message of the Librarian and Archivist of Canada

When Library and Archives Canada was created in 2004, Parliament confirmed a new mandate that encouraged us to become a new kind of knowledge institution with a truly national scope.

To achieve the ambitious goals that flow from our mandate, we recognized the need for clear direction and strategic choices to make best use of the resources allocated by Parliament. We achieved that clarity by crafting a shared corporate vision for everyone in LAC, digging deep in the organization and its culture. This was a year of continuing and substantive transition for the institution as we worked to implement the vision and the plans developed in our Transformation process. This is a major, institution-wide process affecting the whole organization, our services and the way in which most staff work, focusing on the needs of our clients, and adapting to new technologies. Our transformation process enabled us to define compelling priorities and align them with our vision. During the 2005-2006 fiscal year, we addressed those priorities in many ways.

One of our most fundamental, ongoing roles is to facilitate the management of Government of Canada records; so that the decisions, deliberations and the day-to-day operations of a dynamic federal government are preserved, in line with the requirements set by Parliament. In a time when federal departments and agencies are increasingly aware of the importance of effective record keeping for decision-making and accountability, we are helping lead government-wide efforts to revise information management policies and serve as a centre of expertise and source of tools for departments and agencies as they organize and preserve their records of value.

LAC assumed a national leadership role in developing a pan-Canadian digital information strategy, which will do a great deal to ensure that important websites, e-publications and other elements of Canada's growing volume of digital information are preserved and made accessible. We have set an ambitious agenda, which will carry over in the next fiscal year working with our partners, representatives from all parts of the information community, to develop a Canadian Digital Information Strategy.

For most Canadians, Library and Archives Canada is synonymous with collections that contain much of Canada's rich documentary heritage. Collections are the very heart of LAC; they are permanent – they define Library and Archives Canada. Our goal is to establish LAC as a prime learning destination with collections that are accessible to people across Canada and around the world. We made progress toward that goal by making it simpler for Canadians of all ages to connect with us and explore the collections through initiatives such as a new search engine on our website. We also acted on our responsibility for effective stewardship of the collection through work that will result in a 25-year strategy to preserve and house the collections; to support adequate and inviting public, research and exhibition space; and to provide a safe, productive and welcoming working environment.

Through those and many other actions, Library and Archives Canada is a major contributor to the cultural, social and economic advancement of Canada. As this report demonstrates, we are focusing attention and resources on the activities that make the greatest difference so current and future generations of Canadians have access to their documentary heritage.

Management Representation Statement

Mandate of Library and Archives Canada

The preamble of our enabling legislation, the Library and Archives of Canada Act, states that the mandate of Library and Archives Canada is:

• to preserve the documentary heritage of Canada for the benefit of present and future generations;
• to serve as a source of enduring knowledge accessible to all, contributing to the cultural, social and economic advancement of Canada as a free and democratic society;
• to facilitate in Canada cooperation among the communities involved in the acquisition, preservation and diffusion of knowledge; and
• to serve as the continuing memory of the Government of Canada and its institutions.

The Library and Archives of Canada Act introduced a new legal concept "documentary heritage", which includes publications and records in all media related to Canada. The Act strengthens the mandate of the institution to preserve this documentary heritage by providing for online publications and future new media to be included in legal deposit, for archiving Web sites of interest to Canada, and for the transfer of any government records deemed to be at risk. The legislation also provides an explicit mandate to make Canada's documentary heritage known and understood by Canadians and those interested in Canada.

Summary Information

Financial Resources

Note: The total Planned Spending includes $53,283,000 re-profiled into future years.

Human Resources (FTE = Full Time Equivalent)

An Enhanced Strategic Approach to Priority-setting and Reporting for Library and Archives Canada

The Report on Plans and Priorities for 2005-2006 was based on a reporting structure with three strategic outcomes and nine activities. It reflected the organizational structure that was put in place when the National Library of Canada and the National Archives of Canada were integrated to form Library and Archives Canada.

As part of our transformation to an organization that will fulfil the mandate set out on the following page, we decided to build our Program Activity Architecture (PAA) around a far more strategic orientation. Accordingly, we have identified a single strategic outcome, supported by three program activities, which are depicted below. This PAA provides a clearer basis for us to report to Parliament and to Canadians about our goals, our achievements and the strategies and actions that represent our path to the future.

In practice, this means a Departmental Performance Report that includes information on every priority to which we committed ourselves in the 2005-2006 RPP. It also means a DPR with a more consistent focus on our strategic directions and results, so that we provide a clearer report on our progress and on areas where we still have more to do.

Summary of Departmental Performance

 Crosswalk Between Former Program Activities Architecture and Revised Program Activities Architecture approved in June 2006

 Crosswalk Between Former Program Activities Architecture and Revised Program Activities Architecture approved in June 2006 (continued)

1. The total Planned Spending includes an amount of $53,283,000 re-profiled into future years.
2. Total authorities includes funding received from 2005-2006 Governor Special Warrants and they are allocated by program activities.
3. Corporate Services costs have been distributed to each of the Program Activities as per the distribution formula approved by the Treasury Board Secretariat.

Year in Review

As we indicated in our Report on Plans and Priorities for 2005-2006, our vision is to become a prime learning destination, a lead institution in information management within the Government of Canada, and an institution with national presence and greater capacity to serve Canadians of all ages, cultures and regions. During the year, we made clear progress towards our goals, while recognizing that we have more to do and will need more resources to achieve our mandate.

This was the final year for our transformation funding received to integrate the predecessor organizations that were brought together to create Library and Archives Canada. Some of this has been achieved through actions such as creating a stable organizational structure and relocation of a substantial number of staff to Gatineau, Quebec adjacent to the Gatineau Preservation Centre. It was supported by the move of many of the most vulnerable literary manuscript and music items in our collection to the LAC Preservation Centre from various locations that the Auditor General and our staff had found to be substandard, as well as work on a new approach to storage of the collection.

More visible to users of our programs and services has been our Service Delivery Transformation Initiative that resulted in changes such as a single website, a new Query Management System that allows us to track user requests effectively, the renovation of our public facilities in Ottawa to bring them in line with user needs and a new National Archival Development Program that provides support to Canada's archival community.

We also reached out to Canadians with new programming and new resources, much of it online. For example, our Silver Screen website brings information to Canadians on early films about and for Canadians, while the 1911 Census online adds an important resource for historical, genealogical and other researchers no matter where they are.

Other initiatives identified improvements in services that we could make with existing resources. For example, we amalgamated units and improved procedures related to responding to requests under the Access to Information Act. By doing so, we eliminated our entire backlog of requests.

One major priority has been to address the growing wealth of digital content such as Internet-based publications and websites, and to find effective, sustainable ways to acquire, describe, manage and preserve access to it. As part of our new Collection Development Framework, we created a Digital Collection Development Policy that has focused our efforts to select Canadian websites and e-publications of all types for acquisition and guided our partnerships with other institutions with similar interests as part of work towards a Canadian Digital Information Strategy (CDIS).

Another major priority has been to improve the organization of our extremely diverse collection. A key challenge, and one that will take time to address fully, is to further the development of AMICAN, which will organize our multiple databases that describe the contents of our collection, which are now organized in MIKAN, for our archival collection and AMICUS, for our bibliographic collection. During 2005-2006, we achieved some integration of the databases, supported by a new search engine that enables users to conduct a search of our databases.

A related initiative has been to develop and implement a common approach for the description of resources in all media, known as metadata. We have already begun to use this approach to help our Records Disposition organize the almost 1,500 Government of Canada websites that we have collected for preservation, so that users can find sites easily and consistently.

We have begun to refine our efforts on the responsibilities that we have in the Library and Archives of Canada Act for Government of Canada management of records with archival and historical value. A key element in this has been our work with partners on a new Information Management policy for federal departments and agencies that should bring about more consistent ways for records keeping, with LAC providing skilled guidance to support this change. This complements work that we are doing to introduce the Business Activity Structure and Classification System (BASCS), which provides a consistent way for departments and agencies to classify records. We also moved forward on other initiatives in these areas such as providing on-line access for departments and agencies to our Records Disposition Authority Control System (RDACS), which enables institutions to identify, monitor and manage the official status of their records in terms of retention and disposal under the Library and Archives of Canada Act.

While we have made substantial progress, we continue to face challenges that we will need to address to deliver on our mandate and deliver high-quality services to Canadians. For example, sustainability will depend on having the staff and resources necessary to meet our legislated obligations. The infrastructure that houses our collections will need to be improved, as the Auditor General has recognized, and information technologies will be an increasingly critical element of managing our collection and making it accessible to Canadians and to people around the world interested in Canada.

We will do our part to build for the future by continually identifying how to get the best results from our resources and by developing strategies that focus clearly on meeting our priorities. We will extend our work with partners in the Government of Canada and among Canada's archival and library communities to build collaborative solutions to common issues.