Anger greets secret private Library and Archives Canada deal

"Confusion and anger over a major, secretly brokered deal between Library and Archives Canada and a private high-tech consortium heightened Wednesday amid damage-control efforts by archive officials who say the deal is a good one. Details of the project, revealed late Tuesday by the Ottawa Citizen, would see Library and Archives hand over millions of publicly-owned books and documents to Canadiana.com which, in exchange, will get a 10-year exclusive licence to sell it in sophisticated digital format. Critics say the deal, which had been shrouded in secrecy, amounts to selling back to Canadians what they already own. LAC says the so-called Heritage Project, to be launched with an initial $2 million from Canadian university libraries, is misunderstood. Until Tuesday both sides were refusing to discuss the deal publicly and held everyone in the know under non-disclosure agreements — gag orders — pending an official announcement planned for Friday. It is now unclear when the official announcement will happen but it won’t be Friday. Archivists, currently holding a convention in Winnipeg, are angry that they weren’t consulted when the deal was being negotiated and say the secret nature of the deal makes it impossible to know whether it’s good for Canadians. And in the House of Commons Wednesday, NDP heritage critics Andrew Cash and Pierre Nantel again challenged Heritage Minister James Moore, who agreed that Canadians shouldn’t pay to access their own archives ..."