Course talk:ARST573/Archives in Manitoba

Hi Christie, Great job so far. I really like you overall structure - the one thing that I might change around is putting the legislation section nearer the beginning rather than the end but this is just a personal preference. To echo another comment, I would also consider adding in some more photos just to balance out the text.

Yeah I've been having some trouble figuring out how best to organize my page. I've moved the sections around now - does it make more sense?

Yeah, it looks better now in my opinion. great job!

Hey Christie!

Great work on your wiki! I am so impressed by your content. This is just a minor suggestion, but in your introductory paragraph you may want to link the Archives of Manitoba to their site. Excellent job!

This is an ambitious approach, tackling all archives in the province instead of the main provincial archives. I had a hard time deciding on which approach was better for my page on BC Archives, and settled on focusing on the provincial institution itself rather than all archives in the province. But am still wondering if I should include a see also section listing different municipal, religious, university and first nations archives in the province, something like what the Archives of Ontario page does, and what you're doing with bullet points, gathering different repositories together under one page. I think you have a header coding error which is making the organization of the contents a bit unclear, around City of Winnipeg Archives and Records Control branch. For First Nations archives, did you consider including a mention of U of M's National Resource Centre which houses the records from the TRC? A national, not a provincial institution, but will be a large and significant part of the archival system in the province: http://umanitoba.ca/centres/nctr/collection.html Were you thinking about reviewing provincial legislation that effects archives in the province?

Thanks for the input! I chose to do a more general overview mostly because I oddly couldn't find much information about the provincial archives itself, and also because I was interested in how the all the archives worked together in a system. I took a look at your page, and I think that having a section listing various archives in the province could be beneficial, just to give the information about the provincial institution some context?

I definitely need to rework how my page is organized (I think some of the clarity issues come from more than just a coding error!) I was thinking of condensing it to have a section on each major archives, instead of having it split into a history/ current section, and then adding a legislation section and a section that lists all the little archives that there isn't a lot of information on. Do you think that would help? Thanks for the pointer on the TRC records! I will take a look at that.

I do think that reorganization would help, part of the clarity problem likely comes from the repetition of headings between the history and current sections, losing where you are between them. A legislation section would also be great. And thanks for the suggestion of adding a listing of other archives, I will start compiling one!

The reorganization makes much more sense now, good job. Since you're interested in how the system works together, have you thought about adding anything about archival education in the province? I think U of M has a good Archival Science program.

Glad to hear it makes more sense now! That's a really good point about adding a section about archival education - I think it will help round everything out.

hi again, you're doing great, so close! One of the other students talked me out of presenting links using "here," which I started out doing on my page. (For example, The complete act can be found here (with here linked).) When I reworked it, it did end up sounding less awkward, you could just move the links to the first appearance of the name of the act, your header, for example. Hope that's helpful, I know it's last minute. The addition of images really works to break things up and bring some visual interest to the page.

Hi Christie,

Your page is really well done! My one suggestion is regarding formatting clarity. When I was reading the "Legislation" section, I thought that the "Archives and Recordkeeping Act" and "FIPPA" headings should be under that section. I then looked at the contents guide and realized they were but they were only slightly smaller than the main heading. In comparison, the sub headings under the "Holdings" section are very clearly subheadings. This is just personal preference - feel free to ignore! Again, great job on the wiki page :)

Thanks for the tip - I will check it out and see what I can do!

Hey Christie! so I really like how you have laid out your page! in fact you have given me some great ideas. I don't really have a lot to comment on because your page is looking wonderful! the only thing that caught my eye was in the legislation section and I struggle with even thinking this is a problem, you list the more current act and then the later act. maybe you have it this way in order of importance but to me if felt like moving back in time rather than forward. Anyways your page looks amazing and I learned a lot about archives in Manitoba !

Hey, Christie!

It looks really good so far, you're so close!

The one thing I'd suggest at this point is adding a couple more pictures. I figure there probably aren't many picture floating around of Manitoba based archives themselves, but it may be worth it to even find pictures of related subjects. Just a thought.

Good luck!

Hi Christie, I really like the way your page is turning out! Like Syla mentioned, ambitious to take on the whole province, but I think you successfully convey an interesting breadth of information in a succinct manner.

A layout suggestion: sub-section 1.2 is divided into three sub-sub-sections…but given the amount of information about government records and private records, the whole 'Holdings' sub-section sort of ends up just reading as a vehicle for the HBC archives. Could the important info on government and private records get moved into the introduction, 'Holdings' gets retitled 'Prominent holdings', and HBC gets given it's own section altogether? The content is great, nothing needs to be added or subtracted. Maybe just shuffled about. In my mind this might help your page read a little tidier but it's up to you, of course!

Hi Amy, I'll take a look at the organization of that section and see if I can make it clearer. Thanks for the suggestion!

Hi Christie,

I really enjoyed the content and coverage you've provided on your wiki! Just a few comments in regards to headings. It may very well not be possible, but when looking at the "contents" table at the beginning, I was noticing how long many of your titles and headings are. If at all possible I would recommend shortening them simply because people are more often than not lazy readers and long headings make it harder to scan, therefore losing your readers' interest. Just an idea, however may not be feasible! Also, a few of your main headings ("Legislation" and "Municipal Archives") don't have any content written underneath them because they immediately break into subheadings. I recommend adding a little summary of what readers will find under these headings so it doesn't look blank and avoids confusing readers.

That's a really good point about putting a short paragraph under my main headings - I hadn't thought of it but it definitely will make my page easier to read!

Overall, great page! There's quite a few concepts that could have external links but I'm guessing you're like me and haven't gotten to those yet! Especially links to the other Municipal Archives if you're not going to include more information on those. I don't know if you can expand on Mandate and Mission - or maybe just make it a subheading under something else. As it is, it seems a bit short for its own section. Do they have any notable private records? I'm biased of course but it could be interesting to have some details about people/businesses that have deposited their records there. Otherwise, I really liked the Holdings section spellcheck: "The Hudson’s Bay Company first bean to compile their records in 1796 for internal use." There are a few sections that seem a bit slim but I assume those are ones that you're already planning to bulk up: sections under University of Manitoba, Uni. of Winnipeg and Legislation.

Thanks for the suggestions! I fixed the Mandate&Mission section - hopefully it flows a bit better now? You're correct that the slim sections you mentioned are just waiting for me to type up the info I have on them.

I'll look up some notable private records, I'm sure they'll be some interesting ones. I'm thinking Louis Riel would probably be a good person to mention...

I like the layout/organization of your page now - I definitely think it reads easier. One nitpicky thing: in most of your headings you says Type of Archives: Example (Provincial Archives- the Archives of Manitoba etc.) However you don't follow this format for University Archives, presumably because you talk about more than one example. I would probably suggest just making your headings Provincial/Municipal/University etc. Archives and leaving off the specific names. However, you want to do it though, just check the consistency.

Otherwise your page looks great!

I'm glad to hear it makes more sense now! Thanks for pointing out my heading consistency issues, I'll get along to fixing them soon!

Hi Christie,

You have a lot of good content so far. I don't have a lot of suggestions in terms of content. You might want to include more images or videos on the page to help tie the page together. I know you mentioned it but maybe a section on the archival programs in Manitoba.

Regards,

Kelly

Hi Christie,

Lots of great info on Manitoba Archives so far! I've got a few small suggestions:

• Religious Archives/ First Nations archives are nested under 3. "University Archives". Perhaps these could be separate sections on their own?
• I'm wondering about the Legislation section...although I am going to suggest to move it somewhere rather than at the end (where it seems like a tag-on), I'm not sure where it would fit in. It might even go right up at the top as a subsection under 1 Provincial Archives, say 1.3 after Holdings. My reasoning for this is that it is a encompasses all of your below information, if we're looking at a hierarchy of themes., and it also adds to the administrative context of your wiki.
• Lastly, (you were probably going to do this already), perhaps you could add embedded links for all the archives you mentioned under "Religious Archives" and also for the "Other Municipal Archives". Then your reader can click and explore!

JT

Thanks for catching that nesting error! I was moving my sections around a couple days ago and obviously messed it up a bit... I agree that having the legislation section at the bottom is not ideal... I'm going to merge the lists of "religious archives" and "other municipal archives" into section just called "more archives" or something at the bottom - do you think that would help balance things out? (and I will add some links!)

Yes, I think you could just merge them as something like "other special archives" with an introductory paragraph saying something about the diversity in Manitoba? Also, question for you: how did you get your references to make sub references?! like [1] 1.0, 1.1, 1,2?? that would very much help me reduce my page since it is FULL of "Ibid"s

In the first reference you format it like this: and then for any further references that are the same you can just put and it will make it a sub reference!

oh... that actually formatted the references oops SO I'll just link you to the page I found it on: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:Referencing_for_beginners (it's under the "same references used more than once" section)

THANK YOU, Christie! that will be very helpful. half my wiki is taken up by citations at the bottom. JT

Hey Christie,

This looks very thorough. I did have a suggestion for clarity though. I was thinking you might want to include a parenthetical after you first use the terms Hudson Bay Company and Hudson Bay Company Archives. For instance: "Hudson's Bay Company (HBC)" and "Hudson's Bay Company Archives (HBCA)". Because you use their acronyms throughout your wiki, and although you could argue someone should be able to figure it out by context, its probably best to include it. You have already done this with your section on the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

Just as a comment, I want to say that you seem to really have taken to this style of writing quite naturally. Or, if it didn't come naturally, it seems as if you have been able to transition nicely. Good job!

In your section on "The National Research Centre for Truth and Reconciliation," I wondered if you had thought about using hyperlinked words in order to remove the rather unsightly parentheticals with website information. Just a thought.

It is looking good!

Thanks for the input about the acronyms... I totally forgot to do that!