Archiving

What do we know about Champlain

Birth certificate, drawings from his voyages, only known self portrait - Founded New France - False images of Champlain: Falsely attributed portraits used for convenience - Artistic interpretations of Champlain - Sculptures, drawings - Birth certificate discovered confirming DOB and religiond - Debunked myths

Access to Information Act

provides access to information created by, or under control of, a federal institution - government information should be available to the public; but, - right of access should be limited and specific - decisions on disclosure of government information should be determined independently of government

Keystone of American archival tradition

- Independent federal agency - Snapshot of records at state and local level - Diversification & Specialization

Archives as the Prison

: Power of control, locked doors, surveillance, archivist as guard - Control to access

Archives

Actual physical storage area or building that holds archival records - Organization responsible for preserving a given collection of archival records - The inactive, unpublished records of an institution, person, or corporate entity

Ending the long-form census

Conservative government's ideology - Revisionist history - Bury facts and contradict story - Voluntary household survey instead - Hiring Daniel Caron to head the LAC: Not an archivist or librarian

Medieval Records

Notaries - Transaction docmentation - Church records - Laws & Records management taught in university

Arrangement

Process of organizing records and papers to reveal their contents and significance

Diplomatics

The study of documents, studies forms that documents take and the impact their style has on their content

Original Order

- Al Purdy Fonds - Is this important or a false construct? - What is the purpose of the original order? - In private papers, sorting i salmost inevitable - Logical patterns shuld emerge - No such thing as objective organizatin

American Jewish Historical Society

- Created because Jewish identity was in disarray, much antisemitism, lack of unity, what was their status as Americans? - Wanted to construct a new, positive identity that was American - Other historical socities were popping up and cementing themselves in American history - jews wanted to trace themselves back as far as possible to prove they belonged - Didn't want to focus on immigration or other problems that were "too jewish"

Policy Issues

- Defining what a record is - Responsibility for maintaning records - Storage & Preservation - Security & Privacy - Access - Deal with budget cuts

Document

- Evidence of something that happened - Can be any material that can be studied - Some consider it only written

Privacy Act 1983

- Imposes obligations on federal government departments and agencies to respect privacy rights by limiting the collection, use, and disclosure of personal information - Provides individuals the right to access and request correction of personal information about themselves held by these federal government organizations

Purpose of Arrangement + Description

- Present information in a productive way, making records useful - Easy finding for archives & researchers - try for original order, but not usually possible - Respect the fonds

Paradoxes of the Digital Age

- Some of most important info can't be trusted on just digital then destroye - More difficult to gauge reliability/authenticity - Archives face pressure to digitize collections, but digitization programs are too expensive to be covered entirely by operating budget, funding remains tied to foot traffic in the archives

Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act (FIPPA)

- all government information should be available to the public, with some exemptions for specific types of information (eg: confidential cabinet information) - privacy of individuals should be maintained

Domesday Book Project

- marks the 900th anniversary of the original Domesday Book, an 11th-century census of England. It is frequently cited as an example of digital obsolescence on account of the physical medium used for data storage - This new multimedia edition of Domesday was compiled between 1984 and 1986 and published in 1986. It included a new "survey" of the United Kingdom, in which people, mostly school children, wrote about geography, history or social issues in their local area or just about their daily lives. Children from over 9,000 schools were involved.[5] This was linked with maps, and many colour photos, statistical data, video and "virtual walks". Over 1 million people participated in the project. The project also incorporated professionally prepared video footage, virtual reality tours of major landmarks and other prepared datasets such as the 1981 census.

Code of Ethics

1. Archivists should treat users and colleagues fairly, with no bias or discrimination 2. Archivists must preserve and protect the intellectual and physical integrity of the records in their custody 3. Archivists may never alter, manipulate, or destroy data in their records to conceal facts/distort evidence 4. Archivists should discourage restricting access to records except for essential reasons, and inform all users of access restriction 5. Archivists should protect the privacy of donors, users, and individuals, and respect the confidentiality of records in their custody 6. Archivists may never personally profit from privileged information 7. Archivists should use impartial judgment when appraising records and should not allow their personal biases to interfere 8. Archivists cannot publicly disparage their colleagues, or employer, or archive,. Legal actions are the appropriate methods for dispute 9. Archivists should not personally collect manuscripts in competition with their employing institutions, nor may they act as agents for others. They can't appraise money value for donors 10. Archivists should use their specialty for the benefit of society

Archival Function Trinity

: Selection, preservation, access - Is that role neutral? - Which documents are legitimate?

Primary Document + Secondary Document

A firsthand, original document from the time - Testimony Not a firsthand version, seen through someone else's interpretation

Principles of Archiving

Appraisal, selection, acquiring, preserving,. making available - Responsible acceptance and custodianship - No harrasment, no bias, fairness to all - Importance of privacy - Using specialties to benefit society as a whole

Sous-Fonds

Administrative unit or major division within the record group

Total Archives

Advocates acquisition of all types of public records - Photos, other media - Diverse

Massey Commission

After investigating the state of arts and culture in Canada, the Massey Commission advocated for the federal funding of a wide range of cultural activities, and made a series of important recommendations that resulted in the founding of the National Library of Canada (now Library and Archives Canada), the creation of the Canada Council for the Arts, federal aid for universities and the conservation of Canada's historic places, among other initiatives. The recommendations that were made by the Massey Report, and enacted by the federal government, are generally seen as the first major steps by the Canadian government to nurture, preserve and promote Canadian culture.

Surveying Archive Goals

Aid researchers - Administrative efficiency - Promote preservation of archival materials - Advance collections mandate - Improve planning for archival programs - Education and training - Measuring collection sizes

Values

Archival records exist to be used and not merely saved for their own sake - Some records ought to be preserved long term ,even after their immediate usefulness has passed - Archival records ought to be preserved as completely and coherently as possible, with critical information about context and connections preserved - Ought to be organized properly and in a timely way so they can be used - Sensitive information and information given in situations presumed to be private should be protected from use as long as sensitivity remains - Archivists should administer their collections equitably and impartially - Archival repositories ought to cooperate in preserving local records - Society of American Archivists

Availability

Archivists should not profit frm information - Archviists should inform users of restrictions - Cannot use other researchers work without permission - Can't do research without employers permissin

Institutional Practices with Ethical Implications

Availability of staff and resources necessary to process acquisitions in a timely manner - Availability of proper physical facilities for the storage of holdings both on and off site - Ability to provide appropriate access to materials collected

French Revolution

Begins modern history of archives - Separation of active and inactive records - Widespread by Napoleon administratin - Job of archivist - Open to the public - Archives as national property - Difference between administrative & Historical records - Archivist's power - Use of numbers to classify, fonds

Modern Era of Archives

By 1600, manuals written on creation, filing, retrieval, and care of records - French revolution: Birth of modern era of archives - 1789: National Archives established and open to the public - 1794: Proclaimation that archives are national property - Active records = secret non active records = public - Difference between administrative and historical archives - Archivist's role is defined - Classification as with other scientific and cultural efforts under Napoleon

Preservation

Conditions of record upon acquisition? - Material deterioration? - Biological or other contaminants? - Paper type, films, digital records/extinct technology - Storage: Temperature, relative humidity, light levels, biological agents - Surface cleaning, humidification and flattening, polyester film encapsulation, rpair simple tears, copying and removal from circulation - Moving item to another insituttition is preferred over destructioon

Finding Aid

Descriptive media created by archives to establish administrative and intellectual control over holdings -Provides locations & Outlines of collections - Allows researchers to access specific records

Acquisition

Donated/purchased records - Accessioning: Act and procedures by an archives or records to take legal, physical, intellectual custody - Set up next phase: preservation, arrangement,description etc

Collecting

Essential to have a written collection policy - Must have adequate resources to deal with acquisition - Collection policy should be consistent with the mission of the archives - Institutions should avoid competing for collections, particularly personal papers that should be kept together in a single repository - Institutional obligations

Privacy (Provincial)

Every province and territory has privacy legislation governing the collection, use, and disclosure of personal information held by government agencies - These acts provide individuals with a general right to access and correct their personal information - Oversight is through either an independent commissioner or ombudsman authorized to receive and investigate complaints - Sector specific legislation dealing with privacy - Several provinces have passed legislation to deal specifically with the collection, use, and disclosure of personal health information by healthcare providers and other healthcare organizations - several federal and provincial sector specific laws include provisions dealing with the protection of personal information. - The federal Bank Act for federally regulated financial institutions. - Provincial legislation governing credit unions - Provincial legislation dealing with consumer credit reporting - Many provincial acts containing confidentiality provisions concerning personal information collected by professionals. - Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy act (FIPPA) Ontario 1988 - 2 Parts: All government information should be available to the public, with some exemptions for some specific types of information (e.g. confidential cabinet information) - Privacy of individuals should be maintained - Personal information can include, but is not limited to, a person's medical information, criminal history, financial information, race, religion, political beliefs, employment, education history - personal information remains sensitive until individual has been dead for 30 years or more - only then can information be disclosed - unless they contain information about other individuals whose dates of death are unknown - records in Archives of Ontario marked 'restricted' or 'subject to review in such case, researchers need to submit FOI request, plus $5:00 fee Information and Privacy Unit will assess and process files

Purpose of Museums

Identify, acquire, preserve, and exhibit unique collections or representative objects - Promote cultural, community, and familial identity and understanding - Provide experiences where visitors can make connections between content and ideas - Serve as memory institutions for a culture - Support formal and informal learning and research - Serve as focal points for communities and promote community interests - Arrange materials for exhibits based on aesthetics, rarity, value - Object centered - Arranged materials in an exhibition

Finding Aid

Unpublished or published descriptive media created by archives to establish administrative and intellectual control over holdings - Provides location for collection on shelves - Identifies provenance, thus important link in chain of custody - Outlines general contents of collection for references and access purposes - Allow researchers to access specific records - Example: Sir James Whitney fonds Archives of Ontario

Six Levels of Description

Fonds -> Sous-fonds -> Series -> Sub-series -> Item

Series

Group of files or documents maintained together as a unit because of a relationship arising out of their creation, use or acquisition - Most crucial arrangement level - The order within the series (which file folder comes first), order among the series

Scanning Books

Human dream of centralized knowledge (Library f Alexandria) - Democritization of knowledge - Future probably ebooks and paper boks together - Reading and knowledge as a community activity - Is it possible to scan every book? Copyright issues - Will capitalism allow this? - Obsolescence? (Dmesday Project)

Archives as Restaurant

Hunger for knowledge - A service - Archivist welcomes you, suggests things for you

Purpose of Libraries

Identify, acquire, and provide access to the world's published knowledge - Promote equity of access to information & intellectual freedom Support education and continuous learning and research - Support development of information and literacy in society - Serve as focal points for communities and promote community interests - Arrange materials based on subject and format - Public access

Purpose of Archives

Identify, appraise, preserve and make available documentary materials of long term value to the organization or public that the archive serves - Ensure the accountability of government & NGO by preserving public records and making them available to the citizenry shareholders, boards - Preserve unique or collectable documents - Support scholars, administrators, personal research - Arrange materials based on the way records were used during their active life cycle - Serve as memory institutions - More aimed toward researchers, less to public

Appraisal and Acqusition

In accordance with criteria of institution - Will not accept if the institution cannot preserve them properly - Fair and ethical appraisal

Law vs. Ethics

Law and ethics are not synonymous, nor do they always complement one another. An action can be legal but unethical, or ethical but illegal - Relationship basis of tension between professional code of ethics, privacy laws, and access to information - Privacy and confidentiality

Sub Series

Used when a series is partitioned (e.g. General correspondence divided into incoming and outcoming correspondence)

Forged Documents

Usually deal with important person or event - Forgery can be detected through examining paper and ink, handwriting analysis, comparison with authenticated versions

Remembrancers

Visual cues (e.g. tying a string around your finger)

Canada's Total Archives

W. Kaye Lamb - Shift from antiquarian style collecting to a scholarly, systematic, professional system - Not just old stuff but contemporary society - Keeping canadian history up to date - Serving researchers

Brymer's Noble Dream

Institutional rivalries and his views of what records needed to preserve led him to promote an archives based on British and European models - Rise of professional historian

Accession Record

List of records or volumes added to an archival (library) collection, showing the chronological order of the addition and including accession number, bibliographic information, and cost of acquisition. Also called accession catalog or accession file.

Archival Records

Made up of the materials created or received by others -Come in a wide variety of different formats and can include many media sources - Typically preserved because of the enduring value contained in the information they contained and as evidence of the historical functions and responsibilities of their creator(s) - Records become archival once they are no longer actively being used by the entity that have created them , and are preserved in an institution - Inactive, non-current, no longer being used - May occasionally be used for legal, historical, operational purposes - Evidence, accountability, memory, and heritage

LAC Problems

Modernization = Archives being treated like a business - Decline in service quality, staff cutbacks means less access - Mandate of narrowing LAC Role to bare bnes - LAC has stopped taking acquisitions and being sloppy with ones they do - Specialists being cut, their positions are more general now - Paper to digitization gap - Decentralization, cancellation of loans

Ancient Recordkeeping

Need of memory arises naturally in any organization, human memory is frail - Sumerials recorded on clay with cuneifrm - Priests, kings, bankers need records - First records kept the power of rulers - First: Mesopotamia's managerial records that were managed by record keepers and categorized to be retrieved later

Archival Power

Neutrality is a lie - Power needs to come with responsibility - Impact on collective memory and what people remember and find important - Appraisal and selection - When power is denied it is misleading and dangerus - What is and isn't accesible t the public - e.g. WWI archives depicting canadian forces as good - Systematic exclusion of those not impower

Library and Archives Canada Mandate

Objects of the Library and Archives of Canada are: - To facilitate the management of information by government institutions - Coordinating library services of government institutions - To support the development of the library and archival communities

Speed Relating

Online genaeology - No archives inolved - Mormons put their records on ancestry.com - Extreme genaeology of DNA linking - Only a small % of documents are online

Second Principle of Arrangement

Original order - Maintain order in which records where arranged by donor organization, individual, or institution - Key to understanding how records were used by creator - Not always clear, depending on state of records when donated

Archivists Tasks

Planning, saving and acquiring, identifying, organizing, making records available

What do we know about Etienne Brule

Plaque at old mill, drawings of him at the mouth of the Humber - Explorer among the men who established Quebec - Mentined in champlain's writings - Ambiguity in death birth even with documents

Archives as the Temple

Power of authority, veneration, judgement, what's of value? - Can raise documents to higher standards - Keepers of evidence, information, truth, social memory - Human immortality

Canadian Archives

Pre confederation era: Literary and historical society of Quebec - Publicly funded trips to Europe to locate and transcribe documents related to Canada - Many documents lost in parliament building fire in 1849 - Renewed efforts to collect documents and transcripts to store in parliamentary library - Post confederation: Douglas Brymner is the first archivist, starts a Canadian archives - Starts a records copying program - Government records commission for better preservation, new archives are being built, archivists and archives taken more seriously - Low point: During great depression - Layoffs, inactive government records - What makes Canada different? Total archives: Archivist is no longer guardian but co creator of the past, shift from scholarly to records of contemporary society - Agenda: Keep Canadian history up to date

United States Archives

Pre-Revolution: Local and colonial governments would be record creators and keepers Post Revolution: Pre-revolution traditions continue - Rise of historical societies: First was the Massachusetts Historical Society 1791 - Interest in collecting documents of the past to record, study, understand the past - Acquisition process of historical societies - Gathered all that could be found, published texts of famous people, record preservation - Filiopetism - Rise of professional historian in late 19th century - Reliance on primary documents to write what actually happened - American Historical Association 1884, creates Historical Manuscripts Commission - Purpose is to survey what documents were available to study in private and historical society collections - Library of congress starts to organize historical manuscripts - Public archives commission to inventory and identify historical records, use network of historians to encourage better care of historical records - Rise of state government archives - National Archives legislation passed to establish it as an independent federal agency reporting directly to president, first archivist of the United States appointed - New Deal: Historical record survey - After 1945: Government records had expanded greatly during the second world war, rise of business archives, archives begin to specialize

Records Managers

Preserve information about actions and transactions - Abstracts and summaries - Standardization of recitation, adapted to specific needs

Archivists & Identity

Preserving past identity vs a bias in expressing it - Choosing what to feature and what to exclude, subjective - Deciding what voices should be heard - Temptation to solidify positivity in archives - Papering over what we don't like?

Primary vs Secondary Evidence

Primary: Firsthand evidence from someone that was there at the time Secondary: An interpretation, possibly with opinion added from someone who wasn't there

Rules for Archival Description

Principles for arrangement and description in Canadian archives - Designed to capture and present information necessary for comprehensive and intelligible descriptions of all classes of record material in all possible circumstances - Processes make records useful

Description

Process of explaining the way in which you have decided to arrange the records in question so that future users, researchers, administrators will know where to look to find the answers to their questions

Management

Provides access to materials - Respect confidentiality and sensitivity of information that doesn't fall under a privacy law - Protect and preserve authenticity of documents in collection

Greek & Roman Records

Records were arsenals of law, civil rights, democracy - Hearty reliance on public and private records with all citizens contributing - Adopted by Alexander - All important records available to public - Tablinarium - Closely tied with senate - Census - Essential to bureaucratic state

First Principle of Arrangement

Respect des fonds: Respect for property - Records from one creator must not be intermingled with records from another - Key difference between library and archives (Arranged by subject vs arranged by creator)

Genaeology

Start with records, family photos and interviews, family tree programs - Speed relating (ancestry.com) vs slow research (ontario archives) vs extreme genaeology (Dna)

Canadian Census

Statistics Act amended in 200: 92-year rule for release of personal data after census data collected remains in effect (eg. 1921 census + 92 years = 2013) - BUT, as of 2006, all Canadian citizens have to opt in if they want their personal data released after 92 years - default is opt out, meaning personal information remains confidential in perpetuity if individual does not opt in

Access (Federal)

The Access to Information Act (ATIA) 1983 - Freedom of Information - Provides access to information created by or under control of a federal institution - Government information should be available to the public but right of access should be limited and specific - Decisions on disclosure of government information should be determined independently of government - Information commissioner

How to Assess

The Survey: A systematic assessment of all records and papers not in the immediate custody of an archive - Foundation of all key decisions to follow - Sadly, a casualty of budget restrictions and cuts - Still important to maintaining archives mandate - Records management survey, archival records survey, multi-repository survey, non-repository survey

Appraisal

The archival professions first responsibility - Based upon the records: Legal value, administrative value, evidential/information value, arrangement and physical condition, intrinsic value, relationship to other records - Is this the best source of this info? - Is it necessary in the insitutition? - Does it fit with th einstitution?

Quebec Literary and Historical Society

Triggered the creation of National Archives of Canadsa - Focused on developing art and patriotism through historical research - Copied archives from abroad that had to do with canada - Better storage and organization

File

Unit of items depending on medium of file, folders, bound volumes - Arranged in common schemes: Alphabetical, chronological, geographical, subject, numerical - Can be letter, film reel, photo

Shifts in Characteristics and Relationships from Paper to Digital Archives

Time and space dependence to Time and Space independence - No longer have to access records at archives during business hours, 24/7, anywhere - Vertical flow of Organizational information to horizontal flow of organizational information - Centralized files, reporting systems, organizational hierarchy serviced to filter information and reduce volume as it moved upwards in the organization - Electronic communication system promote "organizational information democracy" by providing direct access to wide range of info Linear documents to non-linear documents - Documents composed of images (still and moving), sound, data, text, all combined in different ways by individual users - Centralized information to decentralized information - Mainframe storage of records disappearing ,thus control

Lamb's 3 Part Revolution

Total archives" and archives appraisal - Managing government records - Serving the modern researcher - Sees the archivist not as a historian, records keeper, librarian, or museum curator but a specialist of records, who interacts with them, and ready to serve researchers

Fonds

Whole of the documents, regardless of the form or medium, automatically and organically created and/or accumulated and used by a particular individual, family, or corporate body

Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act (FIPPA)

ersonal information remains sensitive until individual has been dead for 30 years or more • only then can information be disclosed - unless they contain information about other individuals whose dates of death are unknown • records in Archives of Ontario marked 'restricted' or 'subject to review' • in such case, researchers need to submit FOI request, plus $5:00 fee

Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA)

sets out ground rules for how private sector organizations may collect, use or disclose personal information in the course of commercial activities. - provides individuals the right to access and request correction of the personal information these organizations may have collected about them.