Course talk:ARST573/Military & Secret Service Archives

Hi Kathryn, Looks great so far! Depending on how you define military archives, there may be some other information you can include. For example, the website Mapping our Anzacs http://mappingouranzacs.naa.gov.au/ (from the National Archives of Australia) is based on entirely on the records of military personnel during the First World War. It's not a traditional military archives, but it does use military records and it's an interesting website to play around with. Since you mention that Ancestry.com maintains military records for genealogical research, this might also be worth a mention.

Hi Kathryn,

Great work! I really like the layout of your wiki - your use of headings and bullet points are visually appealing and make the information a lot easier to comprehend :)

I was wondering if you could provide more of a context to your section on "Canada: Library and Archives Canada (LAC)" before jumping into the quotation. Perhaps some of the information in the quote could be paraphrased so that it is not such a large quote right at the beginning of the section?

Perhaps you could provide some hyper-links to the military records / the offices you mention in the TNA section? I'm not sure what is available online, but maybe you could mention the guides that TNA has produced about war records and link to them? They have a good guide on World War I entitled "Looking for records of the First World War"

Link: http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/records/looking-for-subject/firstworldwar.htm

Chelsea

Hi Kathryn,

This is a really minor thing: Could I suggest keeping the spacing the same between your sections, for example after the heading "Military Archives" versus after the heading "Secret Service Archives"? This might just make it look more standardized.

Also, I'm not sure if Chelsea has mentioned this to you already, but you might want to add the and and to the end of your wiki. I may be blind, but I just didn't notice the title of your wiki entry on the ARST573 category page (I just see it on the ARST573 course page).

I didn't even notice the difference in spacing so thanks for pointing it out.

I'm not sure what you mean by the category page. I just added some categories to the bottom of my page so hopefully that fixes whatever the problem is! :)

Hi Kathryn,

Yes, it's all fixed up :)

Hi Kathryn, Great work! I just have a few small suggestions...

-You may want o spell out "United Kingdom" and "United States" when they are part of a section title (rather than UK or US).

-In the section on LAC, it could be beneficial to introduce the quote you use from their website. Something like "According to its website..." or "As described on its website..."

-In the UK National Archives section, it looks like there needs to be some extra spaces between paragraphs toward the end (even though some of the "paragraphs" are one 1 or 2 sentences)

-Some images would be nice if you could find some

Katie

This suggestion may be a bit off your central topic, but I started to think of different ways to tackle military and secret service archives after your comments in class today. Do you think it could be possible to add a section in your wiki on an examination of virtual exhibits on military experiences? I wrote a paper about virtual exhibitions for a class last year and was able to find some interesting examples centered on military experiences (and thus their associated records!).

That's definitely an interesting suggestion. I think for the time being I'm going to focus on more traditional archives however if I have time I may email you for more info on that paper you wrote.

Hey Kathryn-- I know we were talking today about trying to find you some more sources, and I just thought of an idea, you may have already done this, but what about broadening your research to include records management in the military? I know it's not quite archives, and in the end you may not include a section about it in your wiki, but there's a chance that if you broaden your search to include records management in the military or secret service, you might come across some articles that include archives information by relation? Just a thought, hopefully it'll lead you to some more resources!

Thanks Taryn, I probably won't include records management but hopefully it will lead me to more resources.

Hi, Kathryn!

Boy, I thought you said you couldn't find any information on this topic...you have a lot of great content here! I also really like the way you have organized the sections.

I (of course), had some questions while reading your wiki, some of which may give you ideas for things to add, clarify, or expand on.

I was surprised by the number of databases for military records available through the LAC, and how many military and related records have been digitized. Obviously, digitization takes a lot of time and resources, so I started to think about the apparent importance of military records and access to these records in comparison with other kinds of records. I don't know if maybe you would like to talk a little about the "popularity" of military records or the emotional weight behind them in relation to this.

It also seemed so odd that Canada goes to such pains to make these records accessible while the U.K. seems very restrictive. I am not sure if there is anything to be said about this, but I found it interesting. Is the UK more restrictive with their military records than other records or is it just a general access policy?

I also thought it was sadly ironic that the countries that fight wars on the home front, such as the UK, have the least complete archival record of those conflicts due to damage and destruction. Maybe you can link to Chelsea Bailey's wiki on Archives and War somehow?

In terms of non-military archives, I don't know if you want to talk at all about the Canadian War Museum or other specific war museums. I wonder if objectivity becomes more of a problem in a place like this that is pretty much dedicated to honoring soldiers.

I know you were concerned that you didn't have a lot of information about secret service archives, but what you have is interesting and relevant.

Great stuff!

Thanks for the ideas Chelsea...I'm going to add something on the popularity of military records and access issues.

Hey Kathryn,

I noticed that you mention the UK's national archives as 'the National Archives.' I wanted to point out that "the" should be capitalized to "The." I'm thinking that as you refer to America's national archives as NARA, you could just refer to the UK's as TNA and switch the lower case 'the' to 'The' when you mention the archives' full title?

I was wondering if it would be possible to create another section at the start of your wiki, perhaps even before the table of contents, that helps introduce your topic. Are there any commonalities that can be drawn between military and secret service archives? The sections on military archives and secret service archives are distinct entities in your wiki right now. As your wiki is on both of these archives I think it could be useful to have a general introduction that pulls the two topics together.

Thanks for pointing that out to me. And I'll definitely be adding a general intro and conclusion to tie together everything.

Hi Kathryn,

I'm not sure how useful this is to you, but I found this http://www.genuki.org.uk/big/BritMilRecs.html. It talks about the different types of British military records. I thought maybe it could help with your first section on military records as I don't think he's specifically discussing records held at the National Archives.

I was going to suggest fleshing out the section on Canadian military records, but I'm guessing there really aren't many resources on specifically that other than LAC's site. Your wiki's looking great!

Thanks Mariko. The site looks helpful.

Hi Kathryn,

While I was searching for material on WWI's impact on archives I found an article that may be helpful to you. It is not academic, but does contain some interesting information.

I'm not sure if you have found this yet, but John Charlton's "New Collection Gathers World War I Artifacts" (in Information Today, May 2012) may be useful to you. It discusses the digitization of WWI records and Europeana efforts. The article can be found at UBC library.

Chelsea

Thanks Chelsea. I'll check it out.

Hi Kathryn,

Your wiki is packed full of interesting information and is looking great so far. To help the reader get their bearings, I think it would be useful to provide a short introduction or a paragraph to tie together the Military and Secret Service Archives, explain why they are discussed together in the same Wiki, maybe their similarities, differences etc.

Under Secret Services Archives, perhaps you could include a section to answer the question that you ask in the introduction: " Can we provide access to their records without compromising their ability to operate effectively?" Possibly related to this, I think a section on Freedom of Information (which you mention in some sections) all by itself would nicely bring together Secret Services records, and the work of archivists as well as provide an answer to your question above.

Some tiny details: "Companies such as Ancestry also..." - Ancestry is hyperlinked elsewhere in the wiki but not here.

"Competition forces repositories to narrow they focus..." - narrow their focus?

Cristen

Hey Cristen,

Thanks for catching those typos! I will definitely be putting in an introduction. You make a good point about FOI.

Hello! The introduction section is well written but I would recommend that you more it above the table of contents and retitled to something more general.

Good luck!

Thanks Rob. I'm actually going to write a more general introduction and conclusion once I'm done with the rest of the wiki.

Hey Kathryn, The bullet points are nice-breaks it up. But I was wondering if there were subheadings that might be possible to break up the Can and US secret service sections.

I considered having separate sections for CIA, NSA, etc. but there seemed to be a lot of overlap between the different organizations in each country so I ended up lumping them together. I'll see if I can break it up in a way that makes more sense. Thanks.

Hi Kathryn,

This is a great draft! I really like your exploration of military archives and secret service archives. I think you did a good job writing in a "wiki-style" (not too formal or academic). You have done a great job with the external links - I have checked them all to make sure they take the reader to the appropriate pages (which they do!).

I do have a few suggestions though:

- Perhaps you could create a short introduction to the wiki before the table of contents section. The introduction could just be a few brief sentences that say what the wiki article is about before jumping into the content?

- Would it be possible to highlight some of the databases you have listed? For example, you've given readers a long list of databases that contain Canadian military records. Perhaps instead of just listing them you could write a one to two sentence blurb about what the sites contain. This would help give context to your links.

- I like your discussion on the problems associated with having so many different non-government repositories for military records. Would it be possible for you to link to or discuss particular examples some of these archives? The first one that jumps to mind for me is The Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre.

Thanks Chelsea,

I will definitely be adding an introduction and conclusion before this assignment is through. You make a good point about providing more info on the databases. I'll get on that. If I have time I'll also try to incorporate your idea of providing local examples of archival overlap.

Thanks again.

Hey Kathryn,

I'm not sure what you can find, but I was wondering if you've considered adding some images to your entry.

Will do.