Who we are

OurDigitalWorld is staffed by a fully remote team from across Ontario whose collective experience amounts to decades of work in software and system development, archives, and digitization project management in public, school and academic organizations.

We’ve been working on local, regional, and provincially-scaled digitization projects since 2005. 

The backstory

OurDigitalWorld (ODW) is the successor to OurOntario, an initiative of Knowledge Ontario (KO) that was the result of widespread consultations between the Ontario Library Association (OLA) and provincial stakeholders representing Ontario’s public libraries, colleges, universities, public schools, and government ministries. When KO ceased operation in 2012, OurDigitalWorld was formed to carry on the vital work in providing an option to digitize historic materials.

OurOntario was built on established, community-based initiatives for collecting and curating newspaper materials, including BMD (Birth/Marriages/Deaths) indexes and newspaper-based collections, and ODW carries this commitment forward to the present day.

As a result, ODW proudly continues a long tradition of open access to heritage collections and a proud legacy of providing grass-roots solutions for organizations of all types and sizes, including public and academic libraries, archives, museums, historical societies, cultural heritage associations, women’s institutes, newspaper publishers, and community organizations.