By Jessica Dunkin This is the first in a series of posts called The Home Archivist, in which a professional historian discusses her experiences with a private collection of 19th-century letters. In the two years leading up to their wedding on June 29th, 1891, Amelia Wilkinson and John MacKendrick exchanged letters almost daily. Unlike most collections of courting letters, this… Read more »
By Ian Milligan “Thirty goons break into your office and confiscate your computers, your hard drives, your files.. and with them, a big chunk of your institutional memory. Who you gonna call?” These were the words Bob Garfield used in a recent episode of On the Media, to address the storming of the Crimean Center for Investigative Journalism. On Saturday, March… Read more »
By Krista McCracken National digital library projects and national digitization initiatives have emerged across the world in recent years with varying levels of funding, support, and success. How does Canada’s national attempts at digitization and open access compare to international efforts to make material freely accessible online? The example closest to home is the Digital Public Library of America (DPLA)… Read more »
By Sean Kheraj Nearly three years ago, I wrote a post called “Canada’s Historical Newspaper Digitization Problem” in which I agreed with the findings of a Higher Education Academy study that found that Canada lagged behind the US, UK, Australia, and New Zealand in the digitization of historical newspapers. I found that Canada’s online historical newspaper archive is very limited,… Read more »
By Krista McCracken The past decade has fundamentally changed how archives provide access to historical records. Many archives now provide digital access to collections, have digitization on demand services, and have started to prioritize collections for digitization. Much of this digitization has been driven by funding bodies and a desire to increase accessibility to collections. But how has the digitization… Read more »
By Merle Massie Over the past two years, I lurked in the halls and wandered wide-eyed through the conferences of my social and natural science colleagues. An interdisciplinary institutional postdoctoral fellowship, funded by MISTRA (The Swedish Foundation for Strategic Environmental Research) and routed through the University of Saskatchewan, ensured my place at the lunch table and at the front of… Read more »
By Krista McCracken I have a love for most things history related and I thoroughly enjoy all kinds of comics. So when these two interests collide I take note. There are a number of great contemporary history themed comics such as Machiavelli and Hark! A Vagrant (check out Ian Mosby’s great post about this webcomic). The idea of using comics… Read more »
By Tim O’Grady In 1993 Verne Harris, a records management archivist at the South Africa State Archives Service, discovered some junior officials in the transitional Apartheid government had been told by the state’s security secretariat to destroy certain classified records in contravention of the nation’s Archives Act. After official efforts proved fruitless, Verne told a journalist, as well as the… Read more »
By Krista McCracken Historical photographs can be used to serve a variety of research, personal, and community interests. Images can be used for genealogy, legal testimony, supplementing written historical accounts, and providing windows into the past. Photographs can also be used as important tools in healing, reconciliation, and in the reclamation of lost history.The use of photographs in the reclamation… Read more »
By Ian Milligan The government claims that Library and Archives Canada needs to be modernized so all Canadians can access archival services. Yet the state of Canada’s online collections are small and sorely lacking when compared to their expansive on-site collections. LAC does need to modernize, and the goal of expanding access beyond just Ottawa is actually a laudable one. But what… Read more »
