Develop and Foster Partnerships
CRKN is proud to partner with a range of organizations both in Canada and abroad to share knowledge, support initiatives, and spark ideas. We believe that ambitious, wide-reaching goals can only be achieved through collaboration.
Canadian PID Strategy
Thanks to the advocacy of staff and with support from the Canadian Persistent Identifier Advisory Committee, the ORCID-CA and DataCite Canada consortia received significant funding from the Digital Research Alliance of Canada to support the ongoing development and implementation of a National Persistent Identifier (PID) Strategy and to lower participation costs for members. This funding supported our initial steps toward a Canadian PID Strategy and reduced 2022-2023 membership fees by 50% for ORCID-CA members and by up to 90% for DataCite Canada members.
CRKN again hired MoreBrains in 2022 to help build on the previous PIDs in Canada Roadmap Report. This phase of consulting and PID strategy development aims to identify key Canadian research challenges that community prioritized PIDs can help to resolve. This includes developing targeted PID primers, briefings, workflows, and workshops.
ORCID-CA
CRKN continued to support the Canadian ORCID community via the ORCID Canada Consortium (ORCID-CA). 2022-2023 was another year of growth in integrations, membership, member engagement, and developing our community of practice. ORCID adoption grew by over 20,000 Canadian users to a total of 190,000 Canadian ORCID iDs, the consortium reached 44 institutional members, and member integrations increased from 46 to 56. ORCID-CA again secured funding from the Digital Research Alliance of Canada to minimize member costs, and staff presented at the first in-person ORCID Consortia workshop since 2019 (co-located with the Research Data Alliance [RDA] conference in Gothenburg, Sweden).
CRKN also supported ORCID at the global level through Executive Director Clare Appavoo’s seat on the ORCID Board. Elected as Treasurer in November 2022, this was her second year serving on the Board.
DataCite Canada Consortium
CRKN continued to partner with the Digital Research Alliance of Canada (the Alliance) to manage the DataCite Canada Consortium, which grew by seven members to reach a total of 64 this year – passing an important membership threshold to reduce member fees further. Highlights of our work included continuing to provide webinars and community calls in partnership with the DataCite US Consortium hosted by LYRASIS; securing more funding from the Alliance to minimize costs for consortium members for a second year; and presenting at the first in-person DataCite event in several years, also co-located at RDA. CRKN and Alliance staff continue to participate in the DataCite Community and Engagement Steering Group as well as the Americas Expert Group.
Coalition for Canadian Digital Heritage
Supported by the CRKN Secretariat, the National Heritage Digitization Strategy (NHDS) continued their strategic planning process through individual engagement with key stakeholders and strategic planning sessions with its Executive and Advisory Committees to validate and finalize the Strategic Framework. This work resulted in the decision to change the name of the NHDS to the Coalition for Canadian Digital Heritage (CCDH) in view of its updated goals and structure. The final Strategic Framework was approved by the CCDH Executive Committee in September 2022, and was shared with the community during the 2022 CRKN Conference. In early 2023, CCDH Executive and Advisory Committees began the work of prioritizing objectives in order to put the Strategic Framework into action.
ICR Pilot Project
In partnership with Library and Archives Canada, CRKN began an Intelligent Character Recognition (ICR) pilot project to improve discoverability of the RG-10 collection in Héritage. The pilot aims to transcribe 2 million records in total to support our user community, and in particular claims researchers working on behalf of Indigenous communities. CRKN has joined READ-COOP, an international cooperative that manages the Transkribus software, in support of this pilot. Initial results are expected in 2023-2024.
INKE
CRKN continues to actively participate in the Implementing New Knowledge Environments (INKE) partnership. Clare Appavoo and Jason Friedman both participated in the Reviewing, Revising, and Refining Open Social Scholarship: Canada conference in Victoria, BC, with Jason Friedman presenting on “Digital Cultural and Heritage Collections of the Future: Enabling Innovative Access and Expanding Research.”
NIKLA
CRKN is a strong supporter of NIKLA’s Respectful Terminology Platform Project. CRKN and CARL’s members collectively contributed over $250,000 to fund the project for two years. The project aims to build “an open and online platform that will enable a dynamic, multilingual set of terminologies applied to Indigenous Peoples, places, heritage, tradition, knowledge and cultures”, and is an important part of CRKN’s work towards Truth and Reconciliation.