The Association of Canadian Archivists is pleased to announce the launch of a Call for Submissions for the ACA 50^th Anniversary logo. This logo will be used by the Association during the ACA’s 50^th anniversary celebrations in 2025. The logo will mainly be used online (website, Scope and Content, and social media) with some potential use in print. There are no existing brand elements that must be included in the logo.  

Submission: Please send your submission to Dr. Gillian I. Leitch, Executive Director, at Executive.Director@archivists.ca. Include your name, email address, a short paragraph about your design,your preferred Creative Commons license option (recommended: CC BY-ND 4.0),and your 50^th anniversary logo. 

Technical requirements: Dimensions of the logo should be 1600x1600 pixels and submitted in PNG format.  

Deadline for submissions: Sunday, October 20, 2024 

Determination of Winner: The Association of Canadian Archivists Board of Directors will review the submissions and select logos for the contest.Association of Canadian Archivists Members will electronically vote to select the winning logo. In the event of a tie, the Association of Canadian Archivists Board of Directors will determine the winner. 

The winning submission will be awarded a free one-year membership to the Association of Canadian Archivists. Only one prize is available. There is no monetary compensation for creating or putting forward a submission for this call. 

My name is Reiko Pleau and I’m writing as a student member of the ACA, because I am currently recruiting survey participants for a research study on digital storage, as part of an internship I am completing at 221A’s Node Library, throught the Mitacs Accelerate program, and under the supervision of Dr. Victoria Lemieux of UBC's iSchool and Blockchain@UBC.

Details:

As part of its pilot phase, the Node Library is engaging in the research and development of a digital storage system prototype utilizing the network infrastructure of decentralized protocols.

We’re conducting a short (5-10 minutes) anonymous survey to understand how arts and cultural heritage workers use digital storage technologies in order to inform the development of a web3 storage system for our sector.

If you are interested in participating, please complete the survey by August 5, 2024!

Survey link: https://221a.ca/event/survey-digital-preservation-of-cultural-assets/

 

Thank you for your consideration!

Warmly,

Reiko Pleau

UBC MAS 2024

Blockchain@UBC Graduate

221A Node Library Research Intern

rpleau@student.ubc.ca

This is our monthly call for content for Scope and Content: The ACA Newsletter. The next issue will be published on Thursday, August 1, and the content submission deadline is Friday, July 26! Submissions can be sent to this email address. 

What is it? Scope and Content is a news digest, or round-up of news about business, activities, events, initiatives, and calls for participation relevant to the ACA. It is sent directly to ACA members' email inboxes. Its goal is to ensure that readers know what the ACA is up to and have opportunities to engage.

What do we want from you? 

Send us info (and especially links!) to any news from your committee/group. That might include: 

·                     Workshops; 

·                     Group meet-ups; 

·                     Conference-related news; 

·                     Calls for volunteers; 

·                     New or completed initiatives; 

·                     and more! 

Give us the summary version and the link to where folks can learn more. Images are also encouraged! 

If info needs to be added or changed on the ACA website, please let Gillian know. 

What about non-ACA business? If you want to include something about archives/archivists in the news, conferences, initiatives/projects by other groups, etc., please forward those along as well! We will highlight them in the Archival Community News and Archivists in the News sections.

Looking forward to hearing from you! 

You are invited to attend Library and Archives Canada’s upcoming symposium: “Future of Archives and Libraries: How Technology and AI are (re)Shaping Heritage Institutions” on September 5, 2024, in Ottawa, Ontario.

As documentary heritage institutions face rapid technological advancements, the integration of innovative technologies presents transformative opportunities and significant challenges. This event explores these impacts, focusing on how technology and AI can enhance the preservation, accessibility and management of documentary heritage.

Event details:

  *   Date: September 5, 2024, from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. (Eastern Time)
  *   Venue: Library and Archives Canada, Pellan Room, 395 Wellington Street, Ottawa, Ontario
  *   Simultaneous translation: Offered in English and in French
  *   Registration deadline: August 22, 2024
  *   Register via Eventbrite: LAC / BAC Symposium 2024 Tickets, Thu, 5 Sep 2024 at 9:00 AM | Eventbrite: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/lac-bac-symposium-2024-tickets-934651306217?aff=oddtdtcreator
Key highlights:

  *   Keynote presentation by Dr. Michael Ridley, an expert on explainable AI and its implications within libraries and archives.
  *   Panel discussions featuring Avery Swartz, CEO and founder of Camp Tech, and Sonia Bonspille Boileau, award-winning filmmaker, among other panellists.
  *   Showcase of innovative projects in the sector, including presentations by Lisa Mullins, Archivist for Inuit Circumpolar Council Canada, and Mathieu Sabourin, Manager of Digital Access at Library and Archives Canada.
Don’t hesitate to share this invitation and we hope you will attend and join the discussion surrounding the future of documentary heritage institutions!
For more information, please contact: conferences@bac-lac.gc.ca<mailto:conferences@bac-lac.gc.ca

http://www.archivalobjects.com/archivaria100

In recognition of the 50th anniversary of Archivaria and the 30th anniversary of the English language publication of Jacques Derrida’s Archive Fever: A Freudian Impression, this special issue look towards the legacy of critical theory in discussions on archives, particularly within the pages of Archivaria, and its impact on the far ranging and interdisciplinary landscape of contemporary archival thought. Born of the union between archival practice and what was alternately called “poststructuralism” or “postmodernism,” early forays into the critical interrogation of archival praxis were rooted in the effort to reclaim the theorization of “the archive” from the proverbial clutches of philosophers, postmodernists, and others not steeped in the quotidian struggles of stewarding cultural heritage and memory.

Archivaria was at the forefront of this new and syncretic force in scholarship, and rarely shied away from asserting the theoretical challenges posed by archives, and their implications for the cultural, historical, and socio-political landscape. In contrast to sister publications on the North American continent, Archivaria’s focus was pointedly dedicated to wrestling with the anti-foundationalist and boundary pushing work emanating from critical theory in the 1980s and 1990s, and its ramifications for the intersectional relationship of archives with feminism, queer theory, critiques of racism, and Eurocentric assumptions about history. Furthermore, this engagement with critical theory precipitated the necessary reconsideration of fundamental understandings and definitions of archives, and the entrenched praxes that had functioned as professional gatekeepers, laying the ground for a greater opening in archival thinking and practice.

This special issue, in turn, seeks submissions that are in conversation with this legacy of critical theory in archives and in Archivaria, but which moreover engage with the current and future use of critical theories to understand archives, the people that work with them, and their impact on the world. Even with the democratization of archival theorization and the increased proliferation of “archives” as a phenomenon across a number of disciplines, there continues to be a need for archivists themselves to interrogate the tools of their trade and to lead this critical conversation. We welcome submissions on a wide variety of topics, including:

  *   Impacts (local, national, or international) of Archivaria on the discourse of archives and critical theory within the field as well as other disciplines

  *   Contemporary and critical receptions to Archive Fever from the archival community, the humanities, and the social sciences

  *   Legacies and contemporary locations of critical theory in archival scholarship and praxes

  *   Conversations between archives, feminist and queer theory, and critical race theory

  *   Relationships between critical theory, materiality, and archives

Guest Editors

Mario H. Ramirez, Associate Dean and Chief Librarian, The City College of New York, CUNY Rebecka Taves Sheffield, Head, Special Collections & Archives, University of Waterloo

Submission Process – Important Dates

October 15, 2024: Expressions of interest: Abstracts up to 500 words. Please email your submissions to: mramirez3@ccny.cuny.edu<mailto:mramirez3@ccny.cuny.edu>

November 15, 2024: Notification of acceptance February 1, 2025: Full papers due December 2025: Special issue published

Author Guidelines and Peer Review Process Please consult IJIDI Author Guidelines and IJIDI Peer Review Process at: https://jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/ijidi/about/submissions#authorGuidelines

Any questions related to this issue should be addressed to Dr. Mario H. Ramirez, mramirez3@ccny.cuny.edu<mailto:mramirez3@ccny.cuny.edu>

 

The ACA Blog: In the Field is seeking conference presenters and attendees to share post-conference debriefs, recaps and reflections!

The 2024 ACA conference wrapped up two weeks ago now, and for July’s Archives Spotlights theme, we’d like to shine a retrospective spotlight on this year’s conference. Which session was your favourite and why? Did you learn something new at the conference or gain a new perspective? What is something you will be taking into your practice after this year’s conference? Perhaps you’d like to share your conference or poster presentation in a blog post format. Whether you have memories from many past conferences or whether this was your first ACA conference—we want to hear about it!

If you would like to publish a short article, reach out to us and start writing! The In the Field blog publishes pieces between 500 and 2,000 words (check out the full submission guidelines here<https://archivists.ca/Blog-Submission-Form>). Send us your blog post submissions at blog@archivists.ca<mailto:blog@archivists.ca> or use the blog submission form<https://archivists.ca/Blog-Submission-Form> by July 15th. We look forward to reading your pieces!

Many thanks,

Catherine Barnwell

Editor, In the Field blog

Digital Transitions has a special offer for all attendees, to take their DT Digitization Certification 101 class for free.  Sign up for the class HERE. Please use the coupon code DTVIP24-ACA at checkout to receive the class for no fee.

About DT: 

A leading provider of digitization hardware, software, and services, Digital Transitions has enabled organizations and individuals around the globe to activate and leverage their physical heritage collections archives. Whether customers are looking to build their own internal digitization program or hire a team of experts to help preserve their heritage collections, Digital Transitions is the partner of choice for best-in-class, preservation grade, digitization solutions. Among others, our clients include The J. Paul Getty Trust, The Smithsonian Archives of American Art and the Smithsonian Natural History Museum, The Phillips Collection Archive, MoMA, New York Public Library, Morgan Stanley, Princeton University, Iron Mountain, General Motors, Disney Pixar, and the Library of Congress.

 

Digital Transitions Invites ACA Attendees to Take Our Online Digitization Certification Course for Free
Digitization has undergone a rapid and profound transformation in the past two decades. Legacy systems built on scanning have been replaced with modern instant capture systems. Direct-to-TIFF workflows are being replaced by RAW workflow. Institutions are adopting FADGI and other guidelines that ensure digitization is done at a preservation-grade of quality, but require a more nuanced understanding of image quality than relying on manufacturer’s stated PPI. Digital Transitions has created a fully-online certification course for people wanting to update their knowledge of modern digitization processes and techniques and add additional certification credentials to their resume.

Save the date! Are you a BIPOC archivist or memory worker? Come join the ACA BIPOC Forum organized by the ACA BIPOC Special Interest Section next Monday June 17th at 4pm ET/1pm PT!

Join us online to share your post-conference impressions, network with colleagues, and look ahead to ACA 2025 in Ottawa.

This group is a safe space for the BIPOC community to network and discuss topics related to our profession. To sign up, please email bipocarchivists@gmail.com to receive the meeting link.

Please note this event is open to BIPOC archivists and memory workers only. ACA membership is not required to participate.

Registration for the ACA Virtual Conference closes on June 8, 2024

Register Now

Join the ACA Board of Directors on Tuesday, June 19, 2024 1:00 pm EDT / 10:00 am PDT for the Annual General Meeting - ACA. The meeting agenda will include board reports, an update on ACA activities, including committees, SISs and Student Chapters. Members will also have an opportunity to review ACA audit documents and the ACA 2025 budget.

This meeting will take place online, via Zoom.  The agenda and supporting documents are available in the Bulletin.

Register for the meeting here.