National Library says security concerns behind dust-up

National Library says security concerns behind dust-up
by: Robert Everett-Green

Canada's national library says that escalating security concerns prompted the expulsion from its Ottawa offices of researchers and editors working for the Encyclopedia of Music in Canada (EMC).

In a written statement, a spokesman for Library and Archives Canada (LAC) said that EMC personnel had their access revoked this week due to the library's need to “assure an ever-increasing level of security” for collections and paid staff. EMC, which receives no financial support from LAC, has had an office in the library's Ottawa headquarters since the encyclopedia project began 30 years ago.

It means that EMC personnel, who have been updating the encyclopedia's online version since 2003, will no longer have direct, unencumbered access to LAC collections. As of Monday, they will have to make a written application to see materials in a public room, like anyone coming off the street.

EMC editor-in-chief James Marsh scoffed at the suggestion that his staff members are a security risk.

“I told [LAC]: If you need a deeper level of security, I'll gladly submit my people to the RCMP,” he said. “I don't think it speaks well of what a national library should be, that they can't support a national reference work like this.”

Marsh, whose Historica Foundation maintains the EMC, said that the encyclopedia was initially “created in the offices of the national library, in co-operation with them.” He said the “handshake agreement” EMC enjoyed with former LAC head, historian Ian Wilson, seemed to expire once Wilson was replaced three weeks ago by Daniel Caron, a career civil servant.

Caron, whose office said he was travelling this week, could not be reached for an interview.

Betty Nygaard King, an editor with EMC, said she expects that the encyclopedia's expulsion will slow its online revision work by 90 per cent. She also said that LAC stands to lose by the new arrangement, since all research materials gathered independently by EMC editors have customarily been deposited with LAC.

The EMC was published in two paper editions in both official languages before becoming an online publication. Marsh, whose foundation receives about half of its budget from the Department of Canadian Heritage, said that the EMC draws about 20 per cent of the 700,000 unique visitors to the Canadian Encyclopedia, into which it has been integrated.

From: The Globe and Mail