Patricia Demers
Royal Society of Canada Expert Panel
University of Alberta
Dear Dr. Demers:
I sat in at the beginning of your Feb. 01 2014 session on the Status and Future of Canada’s Libraries &
Archives at the OLA conference in Toronto. Although my wife and I had to leave before hearing the views
of all the others who were there, some lingering thoughts occurred afterward that may be helpful to your
Panel. I am sharing those thoughts even though I fully expect other commentators may have already
raised some or all of them.
I did not fully develop the analogy of burgeoning, more or less self-contained and inwardly-focussed algae
blooms, so it may merit further elaboration. Several trends are relevant to the situation the Expert Panel is
addressing. For brevity, I will sketch them quickly below.
1. Both the numbers and proportion of Canadians who have pursued advanced degrees and become
contributors to our bodies of knowledge have multiplied over the past decades. If memory serves, fifty
years ago less than ten per cent of Canadians pursued a post-secondary education, and barely five per
cent of university students continued beyond a pass degree. The number of doctorates most universities
conferred annually could be counted on one’s fingers. The intervening years have witnessed a multi-fold
increase in the proportion of Canadians in post-secondary education and a proliferation of post-secondary
graduate programs and graduate degree-holders. These trends have vastly increased the amount of
published materials.
2. Advances in most fields have spawned the emergence of sub-specialties, each of which tends to
create its own body of literature. Not only lay persons, but also specialists in given fields cannot discern
and appreciate the nuanced differences in fields other than their own. The explosion of sub-specialties
leads to an increase in old-fashioned ignorance among all those who are not members of any given
specialty. The cognitive impact of the exponential pace of increase in detailed information is akin to the
sensory blur experienced when trying to read billboard adverts as a subway speeds up leaving a station.
It affects both the highly educated and those who make policy and economic decisions, as well as the
general public.
3. I have observed a trend toward particularization in the quantitative disciplines over the forty plus years
of my professional career. In large part, it has been enabled by the escalating power of computers to
analyse huge data sets - and to do so increasingly quickly because of "canned" programs that can be
applied with a few key-strokes. This explosion of progressively more fine-grained or microscopic
"discoveries" has flooded the professional literature. If one thinks of bringing one’s nose progressively
closer to a wall of a 40-story building, let alone examining that wall through a microscope, it becomes
apparent that it becomes increasingly difficult to assess the dimensions and context of what one is
observing and "knows" about the building (let alone the sky line or city-scape it forms part of.)
In contrast, seminal works of a broader nature to map out fields of knowing, which take much more time
to carry out (sometimes the better part of a career lifetime) and which at one time characterized most
disciplines, are now out of fashion and almost passé. (My example of what one is able to perceive of
urban reality when in a crowd on the street as opposed to 40 stories, or 3,000 feet or 30,000 feet up
touches on this. Far-reaching vision of organizing principles requires standing farther back instead of
closer up. Kuhn’s Structure of Scientific Revolutions described how it is questioning and searching metaanalyses of detailed information that leads to syntheses that in a Hegelian manner redefine how realities
are perceived and "known".
4. The distinction between producers and users of information is critical. Most professionals, although
they are important users of information, are oriented to producing evidence of their own knowledge and
discoveries. They have a vested interest that is not shared by all. In looking at the way forward, it is
imperative that they keep in mind a clear awareness and consideration of what utility and value the rest of
the population perceives and attributes to collections of knowledge which they generate and of which
libraries and archives are key repositories. My sense is that academics, as well as librarians, tend to be
too introspective in their valuations of the resources they use, produce and manage/administer, and fail to
give sufficient weight to the perspectives of the "profane and unenlightened" general public - who are
major stakeholders because they pay the taxes that provide vital support to public institutions, and are

voters.
5. A great deal of thoughtfulness and effort will be required by those concerned about the erosion of
information resources to avoid being perceived/portrayed/discounted as self-serving. To do that, a broad
perspective is needed on what tangible benefits others (ultimately the public, but also commercial
interests, deliverers of public services, and politicians) can and /or will derive from the preserving of
information resources. Knowledge for its own sake has not enjoyed favour (or ready budgetary support)
over the course of many political regimes, not only in Canada but in its southern neighbour and Europe,
for almost half a century. The Zeitgeist has shifted from valuing discovery to favouring broad and
immediate utilitarianism and Return on Investment.
6. In some of the comments in Toronto, I sensed a marked degree of unfamiliarity with how things work in
the Ottawa bureaucracy/polity. Ministers are the ultimate formal decision makers, but a plethora of nonpolitical actors serve as critical gatekeepers or influencers who play huge roles in what issues get
attention and what decisions are made. They are the individuals who write the background papers and
briefing books for Ministers, and who screen and make marginal notes on submissions. Among these
players are senior advisors, "analysts", Deputy Ministers, Associate and Assistant Deputy Ministers and
professional staff in various secretariats. Most of these players are very highly educated and have a welldeveloped sense of the political landscape and environment. For any initiative to move forward, the
sympathy and support of these non-political officials are usually essential. (I draw on first-hand knowledge
and experience in this regard.) A fixation on Ministers and politically-appointed "Wunderkind" is
misguided.
7. I suggest there may be inestimable value in engaging the services of a marketing research firm to map
out the values of the various constituencies of libraries and users of academic and specialist information.
This will inform the tailoring of the Expert Panel’s information and awareness-building activities. The
proponents of information technologies have excelled in defining what promised benefits have cachet and
political appeal, in identifying and targeting their various audiences, and in defining their problems and
needs for promised IT solutions, benefits and pay-outs. There are lessons to be learned from their
successes.
8. Moreover, the academic and library communities will likely derive value from engaging the services of
professional lobbyists to sensitize political decision-makers. The example of differences in perspective at
street level compared to 40 stories, 3,000 feet and 30,000 feet up is again germane. Those selling
services (such as IT capabilities) to political policy- and decision- makers focus on real time problems and
nearer-term economic payouts and the value or "need" to keep current and technologically competitive.
The allure of the "silver bullet" is powerful. In contrast, the focus of librarians and academics tends to be
much longer term - which usually has scant currency for attracting votes. The "what’s in it for me?"
consideration has to be addressed if one hopes to get decision-makers’ attention, and more than that, to
elicit a belief there will be a sufficiently marketable political/economical payout to warrant a commitment to
support libraries and preservation of Canada’s information resources. Surmounting that challenge
requires specialized competencies.
9. Two issues of a more technical nature also want attention and careful consideration. Both are
questions of fidelity and durability. The first has to do with the degree of permanence of electronic storage
media. Parchment and paper have an established track record demonstrating that they last a long time
and can be preserved. Electromagnetic devices have not endured anywhere near a comparable test of
durability. The experience base is simply too short. For example, I recently decided to listen to a tape my
mother had recorded twenty -some years ago to preserve for posterity (more specifically for her
grandchildren and great-grand children), a record of her life and experiences. She had come to Canada
from Finland, by herself, in1929 when she was just 16 years old and knew no English. Her story is part of
the history of Canada, that of the non-English or French speaking immigrant cohort, which thus far has
been largely ignored, as well as our family’s story. Although the tape was not old, the sound quality had
deteriorated to the point that I will have to have it technically enhanced for it to be clear enough to have
any value. The move to a reliance on electronically stored information brings with it an inevitable
need to assess and ensure or enhance its fidelity in a disciplined, methodical manner if the
information is to be preserved for future generations. Realistic account must be taken of the
resources that will be required for these maintenance functions of electronically stored
information.
10. The second technical issue stems from the rapid and accelerating pace of evolution of both hardware
and software in the IT domain. I have lived and worked through the punch card era, what were at the time

"massive" central main frames such as the IBM 375, IBM mag cards, the word processor bubble, Tandy
Radio Shack desk-top devices, networks of interconnected mini-computers for distributed processing, and
an array of personal computers and laptops with ever-increasing capacity. Some of my data and writing of
only 30 years ago was stored on 5 ½ inch floppy disks, which my current machines can no longer read.
The personal computer I am using at this very moment and my laptop do not have the capability to let me
access records I stored on 3 ½ inch diskettes 15 years ago. As a result, I am not able to assess the
quality of those records, and cannot assess the fidelity with which they could be reproduced with the
"advanced, enhanced and more powerful" continually upgraded software I now rely on.
11. The unrelenting pace of advances and enhancements of software also poses challenges. (Brief
reflection on the number of automatic upgrades and patches should suffice to illustrate the frequency with
which "bugs" and "glitches" are discovered and corrected.) The transformations from early vintage
electronic data records to more current software versions are not always totally correct. And we have the
benefit of only a few decades of experience. If we entrust all our accumulated information to electronic
storage, what assurance is there that some does not become irretrievable and lost in 10, 50, 100 or 500
years. Promises made now will not necessarily provide solutions in the future. Blind faith in
technology would be unwise. There will inevitably be IT equivalents to Fukushima and Chernobyl, the full
long-term consequences of which are yet to be learned (even if they are not publicly disclosed.) But
unlike nuclear power reactors, for where alternative power sources are available, if hard copy records are
not retained there will be no alternative backups from which to recreate lost information in the event of
catastrophic IT failures. It bears noting that applied nuclear science, which is about twice as old as
applied information technology, despite having had stringent safety standards from the get go, has
nonetheless still experienced serious meltdowns.
12. The full spectrum of long-term impacts of exponential advances in hardware and software cannot be
foreseen, but one can safely anticipate the transitions will NOT all be seamless. The magnitude of the
work required to verify the fidelity of electronically-stored information records, and to transform all
accumulated records each time new technology is introduced might defy comprehension, but it would be
folly to ignore, discount or dismiss it. And should a decision be taken that only some information is of
sufficient value to be maintained, who will be mandated, tasked and able to do that selection
effectively? Who will decide those questions and how? Perhaps those policy-type issues are the most
important challenges the Panel can point out, and hopefully suggest viable paths forward.
It is my considered view that the Expert Panel should strongly recommend to policy and decision-maker
to make haste slowly and not entrust the key decisions solely to the IT expert community. It has an
enormous vested interest and only a brief track record. The Sorcerer’s Assistant comes to mind. And I
cannot forget a filmed segment of Dr. Rutherford demonstrating to his gathered graduate students in a
darkened physics laboratory what happens when two pieces of uranium are brought within a critical
distance of one another - in the days before we acquired our understanding of the effects of radiation on
humans.
Respectfully submitted
February 10, 2014
L. Lehtiniemi
21552 McCormick Road, RR1
Glen Robertson ON K0B 1H0
(613) 874 1449