Archives Association of Ontario
Annual Conference
Fanshawe College
(DRAFT)
Wednesday May 27th
9am-12pm
Workshop 1 and 2
10am-2pm
Board Meeting
12pm-1pm
Lunch (participants are on their own for lunch)
1pm-4pm
Workshops 3 and 4
1pm – 4pm
MAIG AGM
6pm --- Opening Reception Western University Archives
Opening Remarks – Dr. Guy Berthiaume, Librarian and Archivist of Canada
Thursday May 28th Fanshawe College
8am-9am
Meet and Greet Breakfast at the Residence (What is the AAO)
9am – 10:15am
Keynote Address
Laura Millar, Archival Consultant
Laura Millar has worked as an independent consultant for over 30 years, focusing on three distinct but
inter-related areas of expertise: education and training; records, archives, and information
management; and editing, writing, and publishing. She received her Master of Archival Studies degree
from the University of British Columbia, Canada, in 1984 and her PhD in Archive Studies from
University College London in 1996. She has taught for many years in the fields of records/archives
management and editing, and she is the author of numerous publications and presentations on
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various topics related to records, archives, editing, publishing and education. She is the author of The
Story Behind the Book: Preserving Authors’ and Publishers’ Archives, published as part of the JJ
Douglas Library by Simon Fraser University’s CCSP Press in 2009, and Archives: Principles and
Practices, published by Facet Publishing in the United Kingdom in 2010.
“Judge Not, Lest Ye Be Judged, Or the Perils of Being a Virgo in a Disorderly World”
This year’s conference – Do you have it RIGHT? – explores the question of rights and responsibilities in
the archival world. What is the archivist allowed to do, and what is the archivist supposed to do? This
prickly issue intertwines the often conflicting domains of ethics, morality, and the law, but it also
forces us to confront issues of personality and temperament. We have an obligation to fulfil our
responsibility to uphold the law, but we also know, as Dickens said, that sometimes the law is an ass.
We have a commitment to a future society but we also have an obligation to respect the needs and
rights of individuals in the here and now. And our goal is not just to acquire and keep archives but to
make them available, which forces us to balance our desire for professionalism with our responsibility
to engage the public in our work. How do we decide, for example, when to provide access to sensitive
or restricted records, when the rule of law and human need are at odds with each other? How do we
make appraisal decisions that balance an individual’s right to be forgotten with society’s need to
sustain a collective memory? How do we respect principles such as provenance and original order and
still not confound and confuse the public in their quest for access? How do we embrace the benefits of
digital technology for public collaboration in archival description, when increased public input
diminishes our ability to maintain control over the descriptive process? Ultimately, perhaps, our
challenge is not just legal or ethical or moral. We who have chosen the field of archives as our
vocation also have to find a way to balance our tendencies for order and structure – our inherent
Virgo selves – with the messiness of record making and archive keeping, especially in the digital age.
We have to find a way to do not only what is correct but also, and much more importantly, what is
right.
10:15am-10:45am
Break
10:45-12pm
Session 1
Copyright and Community Archives Digitization Projects
Moderator: Dalton Campbell
Megan Pugh and Sarah Ferencz
In 2008 the Whitby Archives received an anonymous donation to digitize its photographs collection. At
this point there were approximately 3000 photographs in the public domain with a total of 5000
cataloged photographs. By 2014, after subsequent monetary donations and a significant effort to
inventory the collections, approximately 25000 additional photographs have been located. We are
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currently deciding how to process, preserve, digitize, and provide access to this collection. Our
presentation will focus on our attempts to gain legal (copyright) rights over our collection and will
highlight our processes for providing access to our collection.
12pm-1:30
Lunch with AGM
1:30-2:45pm
Session 2A
Staff and Processes – Issues in managing and Working in Archives
Moderator: Carolynn Bart-Riedstra
Leslie Thomas-Smith – “More Product, Less Process and the Right Way to Manage Archives”
Processing has garnered a lot of attention in the archival world since the publication of Greene and
Meissner’s “More Product, Less Process” (MPLP) in 2005. The authors suggested that certain routine
practices could be eliminated in the physical processing of archival records. MPLP resonated with the
archival world and has led to a fundamental change in how many archivists deal with both backlog and
new acquisitions. While Greene & Meissner were primarily discussing late 20th century textual
collections, MPLP has been used in many different ways. An attempt was made to use their suggestions
as much as possible on a late 20th century fonds that contained textual records, electronic records, film,
video, sound recordings and photographs. While MPLP can be useful in cutting down some of the more
tedious tasks of processing, it did not prove to be effective in all circumstances. The practitioner has to
use professional judgement in determining how to process collections effectively while balancing the
need to decrease backlog. There is no single right way to manage all fonds and collections.
Kristin Blakely and Mary Kosta – “The rights of practicum students”
The Congregation of the Sisters of St. Joseph in Canada Archives provides volunteer practicum
opportunities for students enrolled in information science programs. The authors discuss their
experiences of these practicums, both from the student and the employer perspective. There are ethical
considerations which surround unpaid practicums and internships, and the Sisters of St. Joseph have
sought to ensure that best practices are followed. The authors present the results of a survey of
practicum students and provide recommendations to ensure there is a fair exchange of labour and skills
development on the part of both student and employer. It is the hope of the authors that these
recommendations may be of practical use to other archives.
1:30-2:45pm
Session 2B
Access versus Restriction – Whose Rights Triumph?
Moderator: Ken Hernden
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Paulette Dozois – “Learning Through Doing! Block Review at LAC - Its Successes and Failures. “
The second reiteration of Block Review, that is sampling blocks of records to determine whether the
block may be opened en mass began as a six month project at LAC almost 5 years ago and continues. Its
successes have been many but only because the project has evolved. Basing its work on the 1990’s
Block Review Project, the 2010 reiteration has taken the best of the early project, changed some parts,
developed some new ideas and progressed to a new understanding of how to grant access and increase
accessibility of government records.
Sara Janes - “Whose Rights? A Framework for Consideration”
Balancing the rights of all individuals who have a stake in the archival record is a challenge we each face.
In many decisions we must weigh the rights of researchers (present and future) against the rights of the
subjects of the records. Examples of this range from the highly public and controversial, such as records
of abuse survivors, to the undetected and rarely remarked upon, such as the decision to destroy or
preserve payroll records in a contemporary municipal archives. The more extreme cases are the ones
that are more often studied and held up as examples, while the day-to-day may pass without judgment.
Who has rights in archives? How can we judge the rights of the deceased against those of the living, or
the rights of people we can speak to against unknown future stakeholders? And how can we balance the
tension between these sometimes conflicting rights in our day-to-day work?
2:45-3:15pm
Break
3:15-4:30
Session 3
Fictional Archives and the Reality
Moderator: Paulette Dozois
Amanda Oliver and Anne Daniel - “Projecting the Right Image: The Portrayal of Archivists in Film”
Archivists are depicted in various forms of media, including books, television and films. These
representations influence how the world perceives archivists, but does the media have the ‘right’ image
of archivists? This study builds on previous research on this topic and aims to investigate how archivists
are portrayed in film. Forty-six films containing archivists were identified and a content analysis of these
films was conducted to address the following questions: is there an archivist in the film and how is the
character portrayed? Is there a clear image of archivists portrayed in the films? How do these images
affect how the public perceives archivists?
Dave Evans – “What we do and what everyone else does in North America – Local Archival
Government Repositories Survey 2014 Results”
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The Local Government Records Round Table and the Government Records Section of the Society of
American Archivists conducted a survey of local government archives in the United States, Canada, and
the Caribbean in the Fall of 2014 to take a snapshot of the status of local government archives. The
article will examine survey data and compare its responses with the results of one completed in 1976.
6pm-9pm
Banquet
Friday May 29th
9-10:15
Session 4A
Archival Appraisal and Acquisition at LAC & the AO
Moderator: Mary Gladwin
Emily Monks-Leeson, Karine Burger, & Patricia Klambauer – “Getting it right: Library and Archives
Canada's Web Harvesting program in an archival context”
Archivists have arguably become accustomed to the use of the term "archive" or "archives" by the
general public and other disciplines to describe collections that are not, properly speaking, archival. But
what does this mean when those collections, and those acts of collection, assume greater importance in
our own archival institutions? We will start by reviewing the web archiving or web harvesting practices
of select Canadian institutions in order to examine how web harvesting has been positioned alongside
other types of appraisal or selection activities. We will then turn to an overview of Library and Archives
Canada's Web Harvesting program: its history, its guiding principles, and its collections to date. We will
discuss the various in-house, open-source and commercial technologies currently used for web
harvesting at LAC: from harvesting to storing, preserving, and providing access to harvested web
content. Finally, drawing on a recent case-study, we will examine our own methodologies and practices
for web harvesting, both current and anticipated, as we consider what it means to "do it right" in an
archival context.
Nana Robinette and Rachel Barton – ‘”But what if someday, someone wants it?”: A Discussion of
Appraisal at the Archives of Ontario”
One of the key rights and responsibilities of an archivist is the right to appraise: to determine whether or
not a record has lasting archival value. The act of appraisal happens at many stages in a record’s life – as
it ends its time as an active record, when it comes into an archives’ holdings, when it is arranged and
described and sometimes ever before it is created. At all of these points, an archivist makes a decision
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about the record’s future, but what, we wonder, happens if we don’t make the right choice? Do we
deny researchers, citizens, stakeholders and other users their right to access information when we
exercise the fine art of destruction?
9-10:15
Session 4B
Managing the Digital Record, From Cloud Computing to Respect des fonds
Moderator: Dana Thorne
Mary Kosta – “Getting it right in the cloud”
Using the “cloud” means outsourcing your electronic records to an external vendor who stores these
records on a server in a data centre. The increasing move to cloud storage of records and use of file
synchronization and sharing tools should concern records managers and archivists. This paper will look
at the issues surrounding deployment to cloud environments that archivists must be aware of, using
Microsoft Office 365 for Business and OneDrive as an example. It will provide some recommendations to
ensure that records destined for the archives retain their authenticity, integrity and reliability
throughout their lifecycle if an organization decides to move to a cloud computing environment.
Daniel German – “Respect des fonds and original order vs data sets and other electronic records in the
archives of the near future; Some Considerations on Archival Analog Principles as Applied in a Digital
Universe”
Archives work within an understood world of theory and practice, with one of the most important being
the requirement that archivists do not interpret/change the record, but as our holdings change more
and more to incorporate digital components, the necessity of dealing with these records, their eventual
migrations, needs for software emulation and data manipulation raise the question – is original order
still a sacred cow, or has it been barbequed on the hard drives of the digital revolution?
10:15-10:45
Break
10:45-12pm
Session 5A
Who Owns the Image – Questions of Copyright and Privacy in Photographic Archives
Moderator: Michelle Goodridge
Allana Mayer – “Surrogacy as Democracy: Anecdotes of Access and Affront”
Using several printing methods and reproduction/digitization technologies as examples, this
presentation will create and analyze a historical context for philosophical and ethical beliefs about, and
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popular reactions to, the idea of copying art, visual resources, and pictorial information. The historical
anecdotes will help to dispel the notion that modern digital-native media-sharing is an unprecedented
trend: the urge to “democratize” art by reproduction and dissemination is recorded at least as far back
as the means of doing so (and sometimes further).
Danielle Robichaud - “’How would I feel?’: Personal privacy and intellectual rights in the Nouwen
Archives’ photograph series”
The Henri J.M. Nouwen Archives and Research Collection opened in the Kelly Library at the University of
St. Michael’s College in 2000. Nouwen, a Dutch priest, writer and teacher who died in 1996, was a
diligent record keeper whose papers were arranged into 15 series. Among them is a Photographs Series
consisting of several thousand items, including photos, slides and photograph albums. As a profoundly
rich documentary resource, the Photograph Series is popular with both scholarly researchers and
Nouwen enthusiasts. It is also, however, a complicated and sensitive arena for personal privacy and
intellectual rights.
10:45-12pm
Session 5B
Archival Responsibilities from Documenting Scottish Child Care to Expo ‘67
Moderator: Brian Masschaele
Janel Cheng and Karolina Zuchniak – “Recordkeeping and the Law – Issues from Scotland”
The relationship between recordkeeping and the law is intimate and complex: over the past few
decades, numerous legal cases involving social justice have emerged around the world which brought to
light the poor recordkeeping practices of public and private agencies. Presenting part of a larger
investigation headed by Dr. Wendy Duff and Dr. Heather MacNeil, we examine how records are being
used in the legal battles for justice for and by former residents of care and survivors of abuse around the
world - focusing particularly on the historical abuse of children in care in Scotland - and how records and
recordkeeping practices have impacted those seeking acknowledgement and restitution for historical
abuse.
Joel Sherlock - “The Expo 67 fonds: Questioning the Priorities of the Archives”
Few archivists are their own masters. Archives typically serve parent organizations such as
governments, universities, churches, and private corporations. Sometimes the effect of business goals
on an organization put the archivist in a position where she/he must choose between keeping an
institutional mandate and preserving the memory of a historical event. This presentation looks to
examine the sometimes conflicting roles and responsibilities of the archivist: first, a guardian and
interpreter of the historical record; second, a provider of administrative support; and finally, a public
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servant. This presentation will also explore the archivist’s challenge of juggling these roles on a day-today basis.
12pm-2pm
Awards Luncheon
2-3:15pm
Session 6
Life is a highway: crossing boundaries, redefining relationships and setting a new course for the
Ontario archival community.
Moderator: Paul Henry
Sean Smith and Matt Szybalski
Earlier this year, the Canadian Archives Summit called for increased collaboration between archival
institutions. Acting on this call, the Archives of Ontario decided to take steps to connect and reconnect
with its colleagues across the province. More specifically, it decided that it was time to start a dialogue
with Ontario’s archivists about sharing information to strengthen our partnerships in the archival
community. The Archives of Ontario sent archivists into the field to meet with archives and archivists
across the province. In doing so, it found that the there was great mutual interest in opening dialogue
between institutions and that the community was willing to start talking about how we can work
together in documenting and celebrating the collective memory of the province.
Sean Smith will examine the origins of the Archives of Ontario’s collaborative strategy and will examine
its outcomes in light of its stated objectives of promoting and developing its relationships within the
archival community; increasing our presence among its professional community; sharing the AO’s
private acquisition strategy; and developing a collaborative approach to its acquisitions.
IDC Chair, Matt Szybalski, will provide an update on the IDC’s progress and lead an interactive discussion
to gather member feedback on the issue. The discussion will identify the benefits of a cooperative
collection strategy and the opportunities presented by the AO initiative described by Sean Smith, as well
as the internal barriers and external challenges to making a cooperative strategy work.
Poster Session
Please note that while the Conference is going on, the AAO is sponsoring a poster session being held
concurrently with the other sessions. On breaks, Conference participants can view up to 10 posters
created or designed by students, archival practitioners, or both. These posters address a variety of
themes, and as of this date will represent research or positions developed locally, nationally as well as
internationally.
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