Course talk:ARST573/Archives of Ontario

Hey Lisa, I think you should keep the "Operational Functions" section about the Archives of Ontario. You could discuss the services the archives offers, as well as their educational programs (there's some info on their website about this) such as their public tours or their onside workshops or travelling workshops. Since there are A LOT of archives in Ontario, I think you could focus mostly on the Provincial Archives, while acknowledging the rest of the archival system, but not having to go into too much detail about it. It does say that your list of Archives in Ontario needs some revision, but maybe you want to consider breaking it into categories of professional organizations, municipal archives, archives resources, community archives, etc. Hope that makes sense!

Thanks Alexandra! To clarify, professional organizations would encompass the Archives Association of Ontario? I am unaware of any other associations pertaining to only Ontario, however, I could send a quick email to my ACA advisor who may know of more. In terms of the archives resources category, I am not sure if there are resources uniquely available in Ontario but I will have a look.

Oh, good point. Sorry, my bad. Professional associations was not the right term. It seemed to me that some of the entities listed are not "archives" per se, but were definitely related to the archival field and so "professional association" came to mind... Hope this makes more sense :)

Thanks, lady!

I've tried to incorporate your comments and you can see it here at http://wiki.ubc.ca/Sandbox:Archives_of_Ontario_draft

I made a new sandbox page to play around with the format of my wiki before I decided to delete everything! I don't want to lose it again!

Lookin' good, Lady! :)

Hi Lisa,

Your wiki is shaping up very nicely. I read the comments below and while I agree that the topic of Archives in Ontario is quite a big one, I think it's interesting to discuss other archives in Ontario and how they are connected to and managed by the Archives of Ontario, including community archives.

Here is a recent article from Archivaria that may be helpful to you: Levi, Charles. "Five Hundred 5.25-Inch Discs and One (Finicky) Machine: A Report on a Legacy E-Records Pilot Project at the Archives on Ontario." #72

Cristen

Excellent! I will take a look at the article, thanks!

I have been bouncing back and forth between deciding whether or not to elaborate on community archives in Ontario. Thanks for your input!

Hi Lisa,

I was just reading through your wiki and wanted to mention a small potential edit. Under the Legislation section you have written:

"The public retains the right to access any public record of archival value and any private record of archival value, or copy of the record, that is in the custody and control of the archives; however, public access to public and private records may be subject to any restrictions imposed by law, and/or private records may be subject to any restrictions imposed by agreement upon acquisition." (this corresponds with footnote 5).

I was wondering if it would be possible to break this sentence into two sentences - it's really long.

Overall, great work and all the best for finishing it up... whilst in Ontario! :)

Chelsea

Thanks Chelsea! Now that my conference is over I plan on tweaking quite a bit of my wiki. I will add this to the list!

To start off our discussion, I would like to ask for your input regarding the wiki structure. What are your thoughts? Would some headings be more appropriate elsewhere? For example, legislation applies to the Provincial Archives of Ontario and not to the municipal and community archives. Because of this, do you feel legislation would be more appropriate as a subheading below Provincial? I welcome any feedback!

Hey Lisa, I'm not one of your pod-people, but I thought I'd just say that if the legislation and provincial archives sections aren't going to be much longer, it seems reasonable to put legislation as a subheading below provincial. Also, you might want to throw in a photo of the provincial archives or something.

Thanks Mariko! That's very helpful, I'll add a few photos.

Hi Lisa, I do think that perhaps legislation would be more appropriate as a sub-heading of provincial archives, since the legislation only deals with that body. Also, it may be good to have Provincial Archives, Municipal Archives, and Community Archives all follow each other, rather than putting Records Management between the provincial and municipal sections. Perhaps the records management section should actually be a sub-section of Provincial Archives?

Also, it may be nice to mention municipal and community archives briefly in the History and Development section, just to introduce them and to make it clear that this entry is about the many archives in Ontario, rather than just the Provincial Archives of Ontario.

Finally, this would take a little time, but hyper-linking the list of archives in the last section to their website might be a nice touch.

Oh, and I agree with Mariko that a photo or two could be a good addition (I need to do that for my page too - just need to figure out that whole copyright thing...).

~Katie

Thanks Katie. I like your suggestion regarding the layout. I think it would be more clear to have legislation and records management as subheadings to the Provincial Archives. I had a hard time deciding where to place the records management portion. If I remember correctly, in my first draft (that I didn't save) I had placed records management at the bottom but I was still unhappy with it's placement.

I agree, hyper-linking would be great for that long list I have at the bottom of the page. I had it on my initial to-do list but I thought I would add it in after since it would take a bit of time to do. I would also like to go through the list carefully to ensure that they are all accurate and up-to-date.

Hi, Lisa.

Well, my first wiki lesson of the day is when writing a response to a discussion thread, if you notice a "New post. Update thread." link, don't click it. You will lose the post you have been working on. So here we go with round two.

Anyway...looking good! There are a lot of "dazzling details," as the marking people would say, in your page that I found particularly interesting! Regarding the structure, I think you could put the legislation section under "History and Development" and "Responsibility of Records Management" under the provincial section (as Katie also suggested).

You likely already have plans to expand on some of these items, but they are just the things that jumped out at me as most interesting, which I had questions about, or which I would be most eager to read more about:

1. In the history and development section, I am especially looking forward to reading more about the archives during the depression years and the later strategies to reduce the rate of record accumulation.
2. The Task Force on Intellectual Controls sounds a bit like something out of 1984, but I'll bet it was quite an undertaking. I was curious about who all was on the task force, how they would have been chosen, and what the process was...that is if you have the time and resources to go into that stuff.
3. In the archival holdings section, perhaps you could highlight 2-3 of their most well-known or well-used fonds with a couple of sentences on each?
4. That bit about the archives being part of the Department of Travel and Publicity was a bizarre little detail. Maybe that would be something to talk more about in the history and development section...the various departments and ministries that the archives has reported to over the years?
   

If you would like me to expand on any of these or have questions, please feel free to let me know.

I thought that Katie made a good point when she said: "Also, it may be nice to mention municipal and community archives briefly in the History and Development section, just to introduce them and to make it clear that this entry is about the many archives in Ontario, rather than just the Provincial Archives of Ontario." I was initially unsure if "Archives of Ontario" referred to a singe institution or all of the archives in the province, and mentioning the other types of archives in the province or a slight wording change could clear that up nicely.

Great stuff so far, Lisa!

Thanks Chelsea. Great ideas and sorry to hear about your first wiki response disappearing into the virtual realm. Sounds a lot like my first draft!

At first I had a difficult time discerning between Archives of Ontario and Archives in Ontario. Archives of Ontario is the more common name to the Provincial archives, whereas Archives in Ontario can refer to all the archives within the province. What are your thoughts about changing the title to distinguish the difference?

In response to your points: 1. I recall one of my resources touched on the subject of the depression years and the archives of Ontario. They were focused more on the Provincial archives since I haven't found any other resources yet to suggest that a municipal archives existed yet. I need to find more resources on the history of the municipal archives as per both of your suggestions to incorporate it into the history heading. 2. I was also really interested in this mysterious task force when I was reading the article as well. It doesn't go into detail on who they were or how they were selected but it certainly covered the procedure that was followed to implement the change. It's an interesting read and it goes into detail about the pro's and con's. My guess is the article was published to assist other organizations in developing a methodology for changing their procedures. I'll make sure I add more about this in the wiki. 3. I was thinking about including a short list, e.g. photographs, maps, etc. to give a few general ideas. I found a bit of history surrounding the acquisition of their art collection so I'll add that as a more detailed example. 2-3 is a great start, thanks. 4. Perhaps I could include a subheading regarding the power structure of the archives under the history section. I do have more information concerning the history of the Provincial archives and their power structure. Or perhaps I could write up the history section following a timeline (maybe with bullet points) and incorporate both the provincial, municipal, and community archives within the timeline. What are your thoughts on this? Thanks for your help, I'm enjoying bouncing these ideas back and forth!

Hi, Lisa!

Yes, I think if you want the focus to be on all of the archives in the province rather than just the provincial archives, then the title "Archives of Ontario" is the way to go. One question I have related to this (and feel free to tell me to go jump of a bridge) is whether you are maybe taking on too much with the topic of archives in Ontario rather than the Archives of Ontario? If you've spent a lot of time on the municipal archives portion or you don't think you have enough on the provincial side, feel free to ignore me, but it's something to think about. Another student in a class further down the road may want to take on municipal archives as a group or focus on a particular city archives.

Part of what got me thinking about this was your proposal to include a timeline, which I like a lot, but a timeline that includes provincial, municipal and community archives seemed like it would be a lot to take on and might get a bit confusing. Again, feel free to ignore me here, but it feels very ambitious. Of course, you are very ambitious, so there you go. The time line could definitely include shifts in the power structure of the archives, since you have more about that, and I think it would provide a nice clear good snapshot for better understanding of the system. Also if you decided to focus on just the provincial archives, you could expand more on the holdings, if that is of interest to you. Just some thoughts!

Hi Lisa, Feel free to tell me to go jump off a bridge as well, but I also wonder if you might consider making this entry just about the provincial Archives of Ontario. I say this because it is a worthy topic by itself, and focusing only on one institution would open up space and time to expand more on details about it.

That being said, talking about the entire network of archives in Ontario is also quite interesting, just a lot to talk about. I feel like the title of the entry in this case would be "Archives in Ontario," or maybe "Archival Institutions in Ontario." If you do stick with this route you may consider mentioning or adding a link to the Archives Association of Ontario (http://aao-archivists.ca/index.php).

I agree with Katie (and with Cristen above) that talking about the entire provincial archival network would be very interesting (speaking of which, I have becoming very fascinated by the collaborative acquisition agreement in Nova Scotia...have to learn more about that when I have more time)...buuuuuuut...I do imagine that most of your scholarly / non-website resources are probably about the provincial archives itself, and a lot of the subsections you were planning to talk about (like the archivist and the records management function) relate to the provincial repository rather than municipal or communities archives. And, as Katie says, the provincial archives is a worthy topic in its own right!

Hi Lisa,

Great work thus far!

I was reading through your wiki and found some sentences that could be referenced or rephrased.

History and development section: "The rich history of the Archives of Ontario began in 1903 and marks the appointment of Alexander Fraser as the Archivist for the Province of Ontario by Premier George Ross and the Government of Ontario" - could this sentence be referenced to a source?

Provincial Archives section: "Prior to 1986, finding aids and control documentation were an intimidating hotchpotch of things that seemed like a good idea at the time." - perhaps this could be reworded so it is a bit more formal, without becoming too scholarly?

Sometimes your wiki has sentences that say "the Archives of Ontario" and at other times "the archives' of Ontario". Perhaps this could become more standardized?

Chelsea

Hey Lisa! Don't know if it will fit with your vision but you might consider adding a small section on professional organizations in Ontario.

Good luck!

-Robert

Hi Lisa,

Great work thus far! Ontario archives seems like such a large topic but you have managed to create a good synthesis of the main bits.

I was wondering if you could provide some more information on the archivist of Ontario. Who currently holds this position, and who has in the past? I'm not sure if this information will be difficult to find, but I think it would be interesting to know the people (and their backgrounds) behind the title!

Also, you mention some specific pieces of legislation throughout your work. Are there copies of them online? It could be useful for your readers to be able to easily click onto the online copies of the acts through the main text of your article.

I was wondering if the Ontario archives you list at the end of your wiki could be broken up by theme, such as business archives, religious archives, etc. This could make it easier for users to view the list and get a general idea of what type of archives Ontario has instead of one large alphabetical list. I was going to suggest hyper-linking, as well, but I see Kathryn has already!

Chelsea

Hi Lisa!

Looks great so far! I'm curious to know how likely it is you'll find a lot of information about the bylaws affecting municipal archives? I think you may want to include the information about how the bylaw relates to municipal archives in the municipal archives section itself, rather than creating an entirely new section for it. However, I can see it making sense as a separate section if you were going to list all the by-laws relating to all the municipal archives that you were going to be talking about? It seems like that might be a lot of work, and so just having a generic mention of bylaws might be a better course of action!

Thanks, Taryn! I think you make a good point. Breaking down the structure of the legislation and the bylaws for both the provincial and the municipal is a huge task on top of the other details I am hoping to include. The great thing about this wiki is that there is a lot of opportunity to grow and develop!

Hi Lisa,

I think it would be useful to add links to the many archival institutions you've listed. They probably don't all have websites but for those that do it would be helpful for readers if you link to them.

Thanks Kathryn! I plan to add hyperlinks to most of them and to do a quick run through to make sure they are all still valid. It will certainly take a bit of time! Thanks!