From municipal and federal government to universities, from religious congregations to community organizations, archivists work in a variety of settings. This year, the ACA blog, In the Field, is setting out to talk to archivists across Canada about the unique joys and challenges of their work environments. We will feature a different type of archives each month, with the objective of showcasing the rich spectrum of archival work.

This month we are featuring digital archives. In today’s post, the In the Field blog chats with Luke Frolick, Student Employee at Northern BC Archives, and History Major with a Minor in English at University of Northern British Columbia.

Q: Can you briefly tell us about your academic and professional path?

Luke: I thoroughly enjoy working with the Northern BC Archives, which has led me to pursue a Master’s in Archival Sciences degree so that I can continue working in this field. I have a great interest in our past, locally and globally, and an interest in how we communicate those experiences through language.

Q: What brought you to the field of archival studies and practice?

Luke: A university project that involved transcribing and describing audio cassette recorded interviews from the 1970s piqued my interest in furthering this type of research. The project involved interviews from various people sharing their experiences from the Georgetown Mill and Company Town in Northwestern British Columbia. The Georgetown Mill was one of the first mills in operation in Western Canada and the interviews gave insight into the town and mill’s past operations and its previous owners. Through these recordings, I was able to do further research in archival repositories and use archival material that was essential to understanding the context of the recordings and the people involved and discussed in the interviews.

Another project I had the opportunity to work on required archival access to a document from the late 19th century. The document was a journal from Archdeacon W. H. Collison while he was exploring Haida Gwaii, then known as the Queen Charlotte Islands. Collison contacted and preached to many Indigenous tribes and worked to transcribe their language so English speakers could communicate with them in their own language. Describing and summarizing this rare document from c. 1870 concerning the author’s experiences gave me a great appreciation for archival material and the interesting lives of the people who wrote and are described in such documents.

Q: What does an average day look like working with digital archives?

Luke: The work is quite varied, but most days involve digitally scanning or describing the scope and content of different materials. Scanning and digitizing multimedia, from photographs to documents, books, and audio cassettes, requires different approaches. Some days include repairing documents for scanning, such as oversized documents, that need to be fed through a specific scanner. Other days have involved removing photographs that have been adhered to album pages for decades to discover that there is information written on the back, something that would not have been seen for possibly decades. Describing the content can involve “detective” work, such as finding locations, people, or even more specific details, such as the make and model of a tractor or train engine that is photographed.

Q: What is your favourite thing about working with digital archives? What are some of the challenges that are unique to digital archives?

Luke: What I enjoy about this job is that the work is quite varied, and I must be versatile in my approach to each project. I’m working with different types of technology, from old tech to cutting-edge, and amalgamating them both. What I enjoy about the work is also the most challenging aspect. Making sure the machines function with each other can sometimes prove difficult, but succeeding in completing a difficult project makes it that much more fulfilling.

Q: What do you wish the public understood better about digital archives? What do you wish other archivists understood about digital archives? 

Luke: They are not permanent, like older media. This is just the next step in preserving potentially lost materials due to deterioration of old material. To preserve our past, we need to keep up to date on new ways of sustaining these materials.

Q: Can you tell us about a project you’ve been working on lately? 

Luke: Lately, I've been working on the project regarding W. H. Collison mentioned above. I have been digitizing glass lantern slides that were created in London between 1852 and 1870. These slides were used in his sermons and depict various pictures from religious iconography, famous architecture, such as the London Bridge, to microscopic bacteria. Some slides are very intricately hand painted to colourize them. They will be posted on the Northern BC Archives website once edited and I highly encourage people to keep a look out for them.

The glass lantern slides in the flatbed scanner ready to be processed. Photo by Luke Frolick.

Digitization Lab workspace. Photo by Luke Frolick.