As part of the Democracy’s Library initiative, Internet Archive Canada is collaborating with the Canadian Government Information Digital Preservation Network (CGI-DPN) to ensure comprehensive web preservation of Canada’s government publications. “We are delighted to be able to leverage our efforts on the Democracy’s Library initiative, a joint project with Internet Archive to create free, open, and sustainable access to government research and publications, to support our Canadian colleagues,” says Andrea Mills, Executive Director of Internet Archive Canada.
The (CGI-DPN) network consists of 11 academic libraries across Canada that use Archive-It (a web archiving service of Internet Archive) and LOCKSS to preserve Canadian federal government content online. The CGI-DPN utilizes LOCKSS to preserve copies of its collections on servers at member institution’s academic libraries, meaning this collection will be preserved in multiple nodes across the country.
As a result of the collaboration between Internet Archive Canada and the CGI-DPN, during 2023-2024 the data cap for CGI-DPN will be doubled its current capacity. This provides the network with the opportunity to preserve another copy of the Depository Services Program collection (Government of Canada Publications), and also ensure that there are no gaps in preservation from previous years.
According to Katie Cuyler, Chair of the Canadian Government Information Digital Preservation Network, “The Government of Canada’s Publications catalogue and database has been a core collection of the CGI-DPN since its inception. Over the years, many issues have prevented us from crawling and preserving copies of the full collection. We are beyond thrilled that, with previous technical issues resolved, and this extra data, we are now able to preserve and make accessible a full copy of this collection, and to continue to do so moving forward”.
The Democracy’s Library project is supported by Filecoin Foundation and the Filecoin Foundation for a Decentralized Web.