The University of Toronto is a major public research institution with a student body of over 67,000 full and part-time students and over 7,000 faculty members who teach and perform research in hundreds of different disciplines. The University of Toronto Libraries, which is the largest academic library in Canada and ranked third in North America, supports teaching and research in all disciplines through service and outreach, excellent collections and access to extensive digital resources and services.

Established in 1965, the University of Toronto Archives and Records Management Service is part of the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library (http://www.library.utoronto.ca/utarms/) and is responsible for the appraisal, acquisition, preservation and use of University records of permanent value as well as the private records of University-related individuals and organizations, and for working co-operatively with other permanent campus archives programs. In addition to its research service, the Archives provides an administrative service through its records management program. The total holdings (at both on-site and off-site storage locations) amounts to almost 10,000 metres and includes textual records as well as photographic, sound and moving image formats.