With physical copies difficult to obtain, members of B.C.'s Japanese community are worried they will lose access to a newspaper collection spanning decades after a local university announced it was wiping it from its online library.
The New Canadian was first published in Vancouver in 1938 by second-generation Japanese Canadians and ran until 2001. It covered historical moments, including the internment of Japanese-Canadians during the Second World War. It is currently available through Simon Fraser University's (SFU) library website, but the library says it has to remove it as it migrates its collection to a new system.
Larissa Kondo is a fourth-generation Japanese-Canadian and she created a petition earlier this month to keep the newspapers online to ensure the preservation of access to public historical and cultural information. Larissa Kondo, a fourth-generation Japanese-Canadian, created a petition earlier this month to keep the newspaper online to ensure preservation and ease of access to public historical and cultural information. (CBC News) As of Friday, there were 780 signatures on the petition.
B.C. gives $2M to Japanese Canadian seniors as step toward righting internment wrongs "I was concerned that the average Canadian was going to lose online access," said Kondo.
"Even though [physical copies] are open to the general public, it's hard to get there, or they might not be able to manage the volume that they could online." Without digital access, researchers and read.