Canadian Inter-Corporate Ownership is a corporate family tree product produced by the government agency Statistics Canada. It has long been considered very reliable for this type of information. Until now it has been available on FP Infomart. Those of us who use the product rarely were able to use it on a "transactional" basis under our Infomart subscriptions. It now appears to have been removed; I have heard it is because they were not able to obtain current information from StatsCan.
To obtain this information, the CD-ROM from StatsCan must be purchased. Details are on the product main page. Website indicates it is available for full subscription (quarterly) at about $1,065. Individual quarterly CDs are available for $375.
I need to think about how often we use this product, if it is worth purchasing a quarterly CD at $375 and if we can live with out of date information toward the end of the year? I suppose I could just wait until the information is needed to buy the CD, providing I could obtain it fast enough to answer the question. Or, hang on to see if Infomart reinstates it.
Hmmm...seems to be the latest fashion in vendor problems. Wonder if we could negotiate a lower subscription rate with Infomart since we have lost some content?
2 comments:
Oh, sigh. Did you end up buying the ICO?
As a researcher it makes me sad when libraries subscribe to information services rather than archiving themselves. Services change -- as you note in the post but archives remain forever. If librarians archive data on an ad hoc basis where does that leave historical researchers? A rhetorical question -- I'm trying to piece together data now.
Really, the problem is that StatsCan doesn't serve citizens anymore (if it ever did). Let's face it the DLI is a kludge which treats regular citizens as lesser worth individuals than academics. No one should need to by the ICO. At the very least the past editions should be freely available.
Twitter rant: Crown copyright is archaic and at odds with an open society and modern democracy.
BTW Nice blog.
Thank you for your comment...I wish you had identified yourself so I could tell who I am responding to (that's my little Twitter rant).
At the time I was working in a small private law firm library. There is no way we would have had space or the budget to purchase original information in this area, nor the need. We just didn't get enough questions along this ilk in this particular firm to justify it.
I'll be honest, few (if any) library staff would have time to track changes in corporate ownership. It makes sense to obtain this information directly from the government body where the data is collected, which is what this service provided.
We did not end up purchasing this tool as we would not have used it enough.
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