Post Workshop Announcement

The On Demand Book Service

As a follow-up to the DLAC workshop, researchers from the Faculty of Information Studies at the University of Toronto, and Keewaytinook Okimakanak (KO) have embarked on an initiative to create an On-Demand Book Service for First Nations communities in Northern Ontario. This service will build on the power of information and communication technologies (ICTs) to provide users with access to public domain materials (as well as possible contributed materials), and allowing the works to be downloaded and printed. The On-Demand Book Service is modeled under the Internet Archive Bookmobile initiative, which sought to bring universal access to human knowledge.

With assistance from K-Net, researchers will identify several geographic areas and physical locations where the on-demand book service could reside in Northern Ontario. It is proposed that the same set-up as the Internet Archive^Òs on-demand book publishing experiment will be used. This includes: a computer, a printer, a guillotine and a binding machine. Patrons of the service will be able to choose a work from an established list, print it, trim it, and bind it. In the end, the work becomes a book, which the patron can keep and which can be produced for a minimal amount (the Internet Archives estimated the cost for the end-user of an average pocket book produced in this fashion to be around US$1).

Links to ODBS-related materials:
* Designing an On-Demand Book Service for First Nations Communities in Northern Ontario -- a working paper presented at the Final CRACIN Workshop, Montreal, QC. June 20-22, 2007.
* Web versions of the ODBS portal [Prototype 1][Prototype 2]
* CMS version of the ODBS portal
* Powerpoint presentation on the ODBS presented to Library Archives Canada (pending).

Workshop Summary:
An overall summary of the workshop has been drafted, covering some of the issues that were discussed along with the next steps that needs to be taken to move forward . Click here to download the report (you will need Adobe Acrobat Reader to open the file).

On behalf of the DLAC committee we thank you for visiting the site and being a part of the workshop.

Posted on 10th of March 2006

Overview

Digital Libraries are "electronic resources and associated technical capabilities for creating, searching and using information" (Borgman, 1999, p. 234). They are artefacts that are "constructed, collected and organized, by (and for) a community of users, and [whose] functional capabilities support the information needs and uses of that community" (id). [Borgman, C. L. (1999). What are digital libraries? Competing visions. Information Processing & Management, 35 (3), 227- 243.]

The Faculty of Information Studies (FIS) at the University of Toronto is partnering with the Keewaytinook Okimakanak (KO), a treaty council representing six First Nations communities in Ontario's far north to organize a day-long workshop on "Digital Libraries for and with Aboriginal communities". The workshop will be held on Friday November 25th, 2005, from 8:00 am to 4:30 pm (EST). The workshop is devoted to discussing the best possible models for providing information resources and services to the communities in the remote areas of Northern Ontario. The aim is to devise a strategy to create a digital library for elementary and secondary school students. Such a digital library would serve all remote and isolated communities in Ontario's far north and even those outside of the membership of KO. From a research perspective, the project raises a number of important questions with regard to the design and delivery of online materials that are culturally relevant and meaningful to the needs and preferences of Aboriginal community members from various parts of the province.