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.

The CCA Board of Directors agreed, at the February 1, 2024 meeting to reconstitute the Standards Committee based on community discussion and interest with regard to work previously undertaken to discuss revisions to Rules for Archival Description (RAD).

For additional context, the preface to the 2008 revision to RAD provides a brief history of the Rules, from inception in 1990, through the establishment of the Canada-US Task Force on Archival Description (CUSTARD), to the emergence of RAD2 in 2003.

It continues:

Over the course of 2004 there was comprehensive consultation on the draft RAD2 document. Not unlike the CUSTARD project, this consultative process revealed widely divergent opinions from within the Canadian archival community. Following a careful review of feedback received, CCAD put forward to the CCA a number of options for proceeding with the development of RAD. The approved option saw the Committee move forward to draft a series of revisions to RAD based on those aspects of draft RAD2 that received the most consensus from the Canadian archival community.

Since 2008 there have been no revisions to the standard.

On February 4th, 2016, invited participants met at Library and Archives Canada on the Future of RAD. From this meeting, a number of takeaways emerged, including the view that Describing Archives: A Content Standard (DACS) should be considered as an example of a national implementation of General International Standard Archival Description, ISAD(G).

Eight years later, the Standards Committee is considering RAD within the context of the Reconciliation Framework, ACA’s Indigenous Matters Working Group Report, and other community-driven descriptive tools. The Standards Committee's work will consult and consider how and if a distinctive Canadian standard should be updated, leaving control within the Canadian archival system or if we should build on the work that has already been undertaken around the world.

DACS, last updated in 2022, and work that has been produced by the International Council on Archives will be considered by the committee as a whole, and smaller working groups will review past work, new documentation, and by the Fall 2024, consult with the community with a series of recommendations for the November 2024 CCA Annual General Meeting. As noted in 2016, it is important to ensure that the archival community is continually consulted with efforts made to achieve consensus on the issues/options for RAD and other standard options in the coming months.

If you would like to be part of the work that will take place from June to September, please reach out to the CCA by either contacting Jo McCutcheon, CCA Executive Director <execdirector@archivescanada.ca> or Paul Henry, Chair of the Standards Committee <paul.henry@ottawa.ca>. The next meeting will take place May 31st and then another meeting will be held on the 21st of June. There may be an additional meeting the 7th of June depending on the work planned.

Chers membres de la communauté archivistique,

Le Conseil d'administration du CCA a décidé, lors de sa réunion du 1er février 2024, de reconstituer le Comité des normes en fonction des discussions et de l'intérêt de la communauté concernant les travaux précédemment entrepris pour discuter des révisions des Règles de description archivistique (RDDA).

Pour plus de contexte, la préface de la révision 2008 des RDDA présente un bref historique des règles, depuis leur création en 1990, en passant par l'établissement du groupe de travail conjoint Canada-États-Unis, le Canada-US Task Force on Archival Description (CUSTARD), jusqu'à l'émergence des RDDA2 en 2003.

Elle se poursuit :

Au cours de l’année 2004, une vaste consultation fut menée auprès de la communauté archivistique canadienne à propos du projet RDDA2. À l’instar du projet CUSTARD, la consultation a fait ressortir des divergences importantes au sein de la communauté archivistique. Après avoir examiné attentivement les commentaires reçus, le CCDA a proposé au CCA un certain nombre d’options pour l’évolution des RDDA. L’option retenue consistait à préparer un projet de révision des RDDA basé sur les éléments des RDDA2 ayant fait l’objet d’un consensus, ou ayant reçu un accueil largement favorable de la communauté.

Depuis 2008, la norme n'a fait l'objet d'aucune révision.

Le 4 février 2016, des participants invités se sont réunis à Bibliothèque et Archives Canada pour discuter de l'avenir des RDDA. Cette réunion a permis de dégager un certain nombre d'idées, notamment le point de vue selon lequel Describing Archives : A Content Standard (DACS) devrait être considéré comme un exemple de mise en œuvre nationale de la norme générale et internationale de description archivistique, ISAD(G).

Huit ans plus tard, le Comité des normes examine les RDDA dans le contexte du Cadre de réconciliation, du rapport de l’Indigenous Matters Working Group de l'ACA et d'autres outils descriptifs pilotés par la communauté. Le travail du Comité des normes consistera à consulter et à examiner comment et si une norme canadienne distincte devrait être mise à jour, en laissant le contrôle au système archivistique canadien ou si nous devrions nous appuyer sur le travail qui a déjà été entrepris dans le monde entier.

Le DACS, dont la dernière mise à jour date de 2022, et les travaux produits par le Conseil international des archives seront examinés par le comité dans son ensemble, et des groupes de travail plus restreints examineront les travaux antérieurs, la nouvelle documentation et, d'ici l'automne 2024, consulteront la communauté avec une série de recommandations pour l'assemblée générale annuelle du CCA de novembre 2024. Comme indiqué en 2016, il est important de veiller à ce que la communauté archivistique soit continuellement consultée et que des efforts soient faits pour parvenir à un consensus sur les questions/options pour les RDDA et d'autres options de normes dans les mois à venir.

Si vous souhaitez participer aux travaux qui se dérouleront de juin à septembre, veuillez contacter Jo McCutcheon, directrice exécutive du CCA <execdirector@archivescanada.ca> ou Paul Henry, président du Comité des normes <paul.henry@ottawa.ca>. La prochaine réunion aura lieu le 31 mai et une autre se tiendra le 21 juin. Il est possible qu'une réunion supplémentaire ait lieu le 7 juin en fonction du travail prévu.

J.M. (Jo) McCutcheon, PhD

( she | her | elle )

Executive Director / Directrice Executive Canadian Council of Archives / Conseil canadien des archives

130 Albert, Suite 1912, Ottawa, ON

K1P 5G4

 

C-613-853-1867

Due to a family emergency the speaker for the upcoming Muslims in Canada Archives Webinar has been postponed.  A new day and time will be announced at a later time.

Thank you for your understanding.

The deadline for nominations for the annual awards for the ACA has been extended to April 26, 2024.

See here for the criteria for the different awards.

Nomination forms are found here.