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The purpose of this paper is to propose an evidence-based environmental scanning model that will provide a methodological framework for conducting community-engaged and community-focused research, with a particular emphasis on northern communities in Canada.

The study has adopted a multifaceted environmental scanning approach to understand the Inuvialuit Settlement Region communities. The research design is informed by various environmental models as discussed in literature from a broad range of domains such as business, library and information science (LIS), and a sophisticated multimethod data gathering approach that included field trips, observations, surveys, as well as informal methods of community engagement.

The paper proposes an environmental scan model as a novel approach to community-focused digital library (DL) development. The paper identifies both macro- and micro-environmental landscapes as applicable to the development of a DL for communities in Canada’s North. The macro-environmental landscapes include: geographical, historical and sociocultural, political and regulatory, economic, technological, competition, and human resource. The micro-environmental landscapes include: stakeholder and community, linguistic, information resource, and ownership.

The environmental scanning model and its key components presented in this paper provide a novel and concrete example of a project that aims to organize information for increased access and to create value through the design and implementation of an infrastructure for a cultural heritage DL. The environmental scan model will also contribute to both research and practice in the field of Library and Information Science (LIS), particularly in the area of DL development for rural, remote, and indigenous communities.

This column headed ‘off the cuff’ is an occasional feature for the NLW editorial board from time to time to air its own views on matters deserving comment but not warranting a full‐length editorial article. This, therefore, is where you will read our opinions. It is worth adding that we on the editorial board are not responsible for the opinions expressed in the ‘illuminations’ column written by JUPITER. His or her identity and sources of information are unknown to any of us.

“OH, that socialist fellow” would have been the rejoinder of older members of the Bromley establishment up to 1950 to any mention of H. G. Wells. It was not held to be an honour for the town to have been the birthplace of H. G. Wells nor was it felt that he should be honoured by the town. No plaque marked the site of his birthplace and there was no greater stock of his books in the Bromley Library than in any other.

A YEAR OR TWO AGO there came into my hands a manuscript book about Edinburgh in the 1790s written in his old age in 1854 by a certain John Howell. This book, which had been sent by a relative, proved to be of great interest both topographically and as a record of social life, and was eventually secured by the National Library of Scotland. A few months later, the Keeper of Manuscripts in the Library wrote to me again saying that he believed there might be further eighteenth‐and nineteenth‐century letters and papers in the possession of the former owner of the Howell manuscript, and asking whether she might be willing to allow these to be seen, and possibly acquired, by the Library. The papers turned out to be predominantly family papers, and the central figure in this context was John Brown, M.D., the Edinburgh essayist (1810–82), the author of three volumes of essays and papers, Horae Subsecivae, the best known of which are perhaps ‘Pet Marjorie’ and ‘Rab and his Friends’.