Preservation of Francophone Heritage Materials at the University of Alberta

This paper will provide the context of francophone heritage collections’ development and management by the University of Alberta Libraries (UAL). Readers will get a summary of the library’s efforts to preserve, manage and provide easy online access to primary source materials. The paper will describe the Peel’s Bibliography, an authoritative guide to prairie history and literature, and Peel’s Prairie Provinces portal, a gateway to the multitude of heritage materials available online. It will outline the UAL’s proactive approaches to the francophone cultural heritage preservation through digitization of analog and archiving born-digital materials, the challenges we encounter, the ways we address them, and the benefits our users receive as a result of our efforts.