Library and Archives Canada launches Co-Lab

Gatineau, April 17, 2018 – Library and Archives Canada (LAC) is pleased to announce the launch of Co-Lab, a crowdsourcing tool that will allow contributors to reveal our history, page by page.

Imagine transcribing handwritten letters like the one that Louis Riel wrote the day before his death to his wife and children, asking her to make them pray for him.

Canadians are invited to transcribe, translate and describe digitized records in LAC’s collection, as well as to tag them with keywords, to make them more searchable for users of LAC’s website and its new Collection Search^BETA tool. By using Co-Lab, Canadians will be helping to unveil important parts of our history.

Co-Lab’s first “challenges” for Canadians focus on four subjects: Rosemary Gilliat (Eaton)’s Arctic diary and photographs; letters from Wilfrid Laurier to his future wife, Zoé Lafontaine/Laurier; correspondence between Sir Robert Borden and Sir Sam Hughes; and New France and Indigenous relations. Those interested in helping to make these records more accessible can browse and select from among a large variety of written documents and pictures.

Canadians can also use our new Collection Search^BETA to find the materials that matter most to them, and then enhance them. Any digitized image found in our new Collection Search^BETA is now available for contribution. Visit Co-Lab and give a hand to history!