With another wave of COVID-19 gripping provinces across Canada, and additional restrictions being implemented to blunt its devastating effects, archives – like many institutions – remain closed to researchers for the foreseeable future. In some cases, archivists themselves have limited access to their holdings, and are required to work predominately (if not exclusively) from home.

Without the ability to process new collections and with many research requests on hold, the archival staff at the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library have taken this opportunity to work on several projects meant to increase the accessibility and discoverability of online holdings. Often left on the backburner as reference services and collections processing take precedence, projects such as revising finding aids and tidying metadata can all be undertaken safely from home, yet can enhance users’ experiences when interacting with online archival interfaces.

With the closure of the Fisher Library in March of 2020, one of the first tasks undertaken was evaluating our online finding aids and determining which ones required substantial revision. In most cases, old typescript finding aids, often with handwritten annotations, were scanned and uploaded online so users did not have to wait for them to be retyped and uploaded (especially since some finding aids can be over 100 pages). However, optical character recognition (OCR) is severely limited when reading handwriting, which hinders discoverability. Likewise, scanned typescript finding aids pose accessibility challenges for those using screen readers or those who have other vision impairments. Since many of our users have commented on the benefits of keyword searching our collections, especially when looking for a specific name or title, it was particularly advantageous to identify the dozens of finding aids in need of attention, and revising them to allow for Ctrl-F/Command-F searching. Additionally, LinkedIn’s online course for creating accessible finding aids provided basic training to ensure that those with screen readers or other assistive technologies could navigate our finding aids more effectively. While not all our finding aids have been revised, more and more are being reworked as this pandemic drags on. For institutions with much older finding aids, this is also an opportunity to revise any outdated and offensive terminology in archival descriptions – especially those that have been created by the archives. Finding aids pertaining to Indigenous Peoples, the LGBTQ+ community, and other marginalized groups should be examined more critically, and revised in a manner which fosters an atmosphere of inclusivity and reduces the risk of making people from these groups feel unwelcomed or attacked.

During the closure, we have also been taking time to enhance the metadata for our online holdings, in hopes that it will improve discoverability. The Fisher Library is fortunate to have a number of its holdings digitized and available through the Internet Archive. The collection of famed art historian Otto Schneid, whose work on Jewish artists was confiscated by the Nazis in 1939, recently had its call numbers and file titles updated so that researchers can more easily map the digital copy to the exact box and folder contained in the library. Additionally, the metadata for of collections on Access to Memory (AtoM) is currently being tidied and standardized to ensure greater consistency across our own records, which will better reflect both the hierarchical structure of the records as well as their provenance.

While neither of these projects are likely to be seen as more pressing than clearing a backlog of accessions and making them available to researchers, the closures make it difficult for archivists to physically access the archives, and researchers will not be entering our reading rooms in the foreseeable future. Instead, we have been afforded an opportunity to work on projects that are often neglected, but that can significantly improve our online presence. The librarians, archivists, and staff at Fisher are all engaged in countless other projects as we continue to work from home; hopefully this project report can offer ideas to other archival institutions who continue to work from home.  post may give other archives project ideas.

Kyle Pugh

Kyle Pugh is an Archivist Assistant at the Wellington County Museum and Archives, and an Academic Library Intern in the Archival Unit at the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library. Kyle recently completed his Master of Information at the University of Toronto. He presented at the 2020 ACA Conference on the student panel, looking at archival collections from hate groups.

ACA 2021 Virtual Conference - June 7-11, 2021

[Dark blue and red banner of the ACA Virtual Conference 2021 - Home Improvement. Featuring drawings of a house, a hammer, a nail, a construction barrier, and a ruler]

The ACA 2021 Annual conference is right around the corner! In the Field: The ACA blog is featuring the profile of a few members who will be presenting at the conference, June 7-11, 2021. Today we are featuring the profile of Sofie Tsatas, MA student in Information Studies at McGill University.

Can you tell us your school and program of study?
 
I am currently pursuing my Master’s degree in Information Studies at McGill University.

What is your presentation about?
 
My presentation, which is titled “Decolonized Listening in the Archive: a Study of how a Reconstruction of Archival Spaces and Processes can Contribute to Decolonizing Narratives and Listening,” looks at ways in which we can decolonize archival practices and spaces, and how that would impact musical records created by Indigenous artists. My research draws upon the book Hungry Listening by Dylan Robinson, as well as the art and musical exhibit Soundings (2019-2021), curated by both Robinson and Candice Hopkins, which focuses on the question “how can a score be a call and tool for decolonization?” From 2018-2020 I did a Master’s degree in Musicology at the University of British Columbia and I wrote my thesis on the music of Buffy Sainte-Marie, a Cree musician. Writing this thesis resulted in a lot of much needed reflection regarding my role as a settler and uninvited guest residing on Turtle Island (North America) and I realized that I wanted to continue working towards decolonizing efforts in my current degree, particularly regarding musical records. While there is still much for me to learn, this research has been very rewarding!

What brought you to the field of archival studies and/or practice? 
 
I’ve always loved information, and while my music history degree seemed like a good fit at the time to satisfy my need for musical research and analysis, I realized that working more closely with particular historical records and documents was much more suited for me. I remember once reading personal letters from the composer Clara Schumann (1819-1896) addressed to her husband Robert for a school project a few years ago, and how amazing it felt to sit with these records and read something so intimate of someone I never knew. As an archivist, I can do this every day!

What kinds of archival futures are you invested in? Where do you see change happening? What changes are needed? Where do you hope the profession will be in 10 years? 
 
I’m interested in continuing work and research in decolonizing archival practices and spaces. I would love to work in community and participatory-based archives with Indigenous Nations, focusing on musical records. Through this research I’ve learnt that there are some amazing platforms out there that are Indigenous-led and based in Indigenous notions of stewardship and record-keeping that are still not yet implemented in many archives. I want to help implement these systems and I think that in doing so, the role of the archivist will change in some ways.

Are there any other sessions at the conference that you’re excited to attend? 

I am especially interested in the “Creating Trust and Transparency: Building Trauma-Informed Archives” Forum and the “Stories We Tell: Narratives of Inclusion” Session!  Everything looks so amazing and I’m excited to hear some of my friends and professors speak as well! Like Isabel, I am new to the field so I am also looking forward to the virtual meetup.
 
Is there anything else you want to tell us?

Fun fact about me: I manage a Bookstagram account (Instagram for books!) called @readingwithsof because I love to read! It is also the most welcoming online community I’ve ever been a part of and I am so happy to be able to share and talk about books in a safe space! 

ACA 2021 Virtual Conference - June 7-11, 2021

[Dark blue and red banner of the ACA Virtual Conference 2021 - Home Improvement. Featuring drawings of a house, a hammer, a nail, a construction barrier, and a ruler]

The ACA 2021 Annual conference is approaching fast! In the Field: The ACA blog is featuring the profile of a few members who will be presenting at the conference, June 7-11, 2021. Today we are featuring the profiles of Kelsey Beauvais and Laura Hernandez, Archivists at Library and Archives Canada. 

 

Title of your presentation to the ACA 2021 conference? 

An exercise in digital curation: Enhancing archival description and digital processing for the Prime Minister Papers Project. 

Can you walk us through your academic and professional path?

Kelsey Beauvais: I went to Laurentian University following my passion in history and completed an Honours Bachelor's degree. I already knew by this point that I didn't want to be a teacher - which seemed to be the only profession and career advertised at the time. My love for historical research and passion in exploring oodles of primary sources lead me to continue my education with a Master's degree at Université de Rennes 2(Year 1)/University of Ottawa (Year 2). 

[Portrait of Kelsey Beauvais, wearing dark-rimmed glasses, a salmon-pink scarf and a black t-shirt]

Laura Hernandez: I completed an Honours History and Anthropology Bachelor's degree at Western University. I wanted to either become a museum curator or continue my academic path towards a PHD. I decided to continue at Western's Public History Master's Program at Western in the end as it was best suited for me. 

[Portrait of Laura Hernandez, wearing black-rimmed glasses, and a grey and light green shawl]

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

We both have what is perhaps considered non-traditional paths to archival practice and we often joke about being "accidental archivists". 

Kelsey: It's been an up and down journey in the search for a career. I've worked with heritage organizations and mainly supporting GLAMs, but it became clearer to me that I was searching for a niche where I could work more closely with historical sources. This really stood out for me while I was working at CCUNESCO as a Program Officer and coordinating the Canada Memory of the World Register; where my values, interests, knowledge and skills came together at a crux in archival practice. Enter the most amazing opportunity as an Archivist with LAC on the PM project! 

Laura: I had multiple jobs in museums since I was a teen, but I always found myself enjoying the research side of things. A big recession hit right after finishing my Masters but I was lucky to get a job with a private firm in Ottawa as a historical research analyst. I worked there for nearly a decade on historical litigation research projects including co-managing TRC research work. That helped me get a foot in the door at LAC, first as an archival assistant in Government Records, then as an archivist for this project! 

What do the theme of the ACA 2021 conference, “Home Improvement: Building Archives Through Change,” means to you in terms of overall archival orientations and practice? 

There is a delicate balance in respecting and understanding what's been done in the past and why, versus understanding and accepting that practices and even archival concepts need to evolve over time. They call it archival science for a reason, there are trial and errors, we come up with solutions and innovations that work for a particular record, project or situation that may not be feasible in the future. Best practices, methods, and concepts will always be a work in progress as society changes and evolves. In order to move Archives forward, we must root ourselves in principles, but be open to change and most importantly, to sharing our lessons learned and solutions. 

Can you tell us about your research approach and perspectives?

 The idea behind this presentation arose from informal conversations and brainstorming on how to process databases/data sets. While the records were suitable for preservation, we felt these were too valuable and complex to leave in their current state. This meant we needed to explore ways to create additional access points for these while maintaining their integrity. Our overall approach has been a practical and agile one particularly when it comes to description: maximizing what is already available (metadata), using this to supplement contextual information, and adhering to best practices to ensure the authenticity/integrity and long term preservation of the records. The bulk of the research came afterwards as we sought to validate our belief that archivists can have a greater role in digital curation allowing us to collaborate with other areas and to innovate in order to enrich descriptions of records when feasible. 

ACA 2021 Virtual Conference - June 7-11, 2021

[Dark blue and red banner of the ACA Virtual Conference 2021 - Home Improvement. Featuring drawings of a house, a hammer, a nail, a construction barrier, and a ruler]

The ACA 2021 Annual conference is approaching fast! In the Field: The ACA blog is featuring the profile of a few members who will be presenting at the conference, June 7-11, 2021. Today we are featuring the profile of Michelle Phan, recent graduate at the University of Toronto iSchool. 

Can you tell us your school and program of study? 

I am a recent graduate from the Master of Information program at the University of Toronto’s iSchool, where I specialized in dual streams of Critical Information Policy Studies and Archives and Records Management. 

What is your presentation about? 

My presentation, titled ‘Towards the Rebel Archive: Seeing Prison Abolition through embodiment, ‘value’, and process is based on approaching social justice based archival literature from the perspective of prison and police abolition. In my research, I seek to disseminate the impacts of prison abolition as praxis in the archives and observe the participatory model from the abolitionist perspective.  

My presentation will be an amalgamation of a series of research projects conducted based on sex worker advocacy networks such as Butterfly Network here in Toronto, as well as an annotation project conducted by Nigel Poor and the incarcerated men of San Quentin State Prison in California. 

What brought you to the field of archival studies and/or practice? 

I was hesitant to return to academia and archival studies for a long time because of the very visible gaps between theory and practice, particularly in the use of the term ‘decolonization’. Meanwhile, I began to engage more in critical race theory, particularly the works of Ruth Wilson Gilmore, Angela Davis, Katherine McKittrick, and Kelly Lytle Hernandez. Hernandez highlights the rebel archive in her work and this concept is what drew me to the broader frameworks of archival theory.  

What kinds of archival futures are you invested in? Where do you see change happening? What changes are needed? Where do you hope the profession will be in 10 years? 

Archives should be ultimately interested in Black liberation and Indigenous sovereignty. Reciprocal and relational praxis is imperative to the way communities want to be represented.  

I continue to think to Jenn Cole’s words on relinquishing knowledge by “knowing that sometimes waiting is the work” (2019, p. 71) in changing what is valued in archival practice. I hope that a shift towards practice as process/progress encourages archivists to take time to think through decision making processes.   

Are there any other sessions at the conference that you’re excited to attend? 

I’m looking forward to so many panels! Black Archives Matter, At Home in the Community Archives: How the ArQuives: Canada’s LGBTQ2+ Archives Has Evolved in Collaboration with Their Volunteers, Towards Acknowledging Emotions in Archival Education, and Dionne Brand reads from The Blue Clerk.  

ACA 2021 Virtual Conference - June 7-11, 2021

ACA 2021 Virtual Conference - June 7-11, 2021

[Dark blue and red banner of the ACA Virtual Conference 2021 - Home Improvement. Featuring drawings of a house, a hammer, a nail, a construction barrier, and a ruler]

The ACA 2021 Annual conference is approaching fast! In the Field: The ACA blog is featuring the profile of a few members who will be presenting at the conference, June 7-11, 2021. Today we are featuring the profile of Greg Bak, Associate Professor at the University of Manitoba. 

ACA 2021 Virtual Conference - June 7-11, 2021

The ACA 2021 Annual conference is approaching fast! In the Field: The ACA blog is featuring the profile of a few members who will be presenting at the conference, June 7-11, 2021. Today we are featuring the profile of Annaëlle Winand, PhD candidate at the École de bibliothéconomie et des sciences de l’information de l’Université de Montréal.

[Black and white portrait of Annaëlle Winand in front of a "Creature from the Black Lagoon" poster]

Title of your presentation to the ACA 2021 conference?

What’s in Between? Archive(s) and the Unarchived and Unarchivable Space of Found Footage Cinema

Can you walk us through your academic and professional path? 

Back in Belgium, where I am from, I studied history. After I graduated, I taught for a very short time in secondary school before deciding to go back to university to specialize in archival science. I was then hired by the Archives of the University of Louvain-la-Neuve where I worked as an archivist for a little more than two years.

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

I always tell the same (true!) story: at some point in my life, I declared that I wanted to work with “dead things”… How wrong was I? More seriously, while studying history, I was always working in and with archives. When I decided to re-orient my career it felt quite natural to study the very material I have been involved with for so long. The Archives were also a place I liked, and I was curious about what felt like “behind the scenes” of such institutions.

What do the theme of the ACA 2021 conference, “Home Improvement: Building Archives Through Change,” means to you in terms of overall archival orientations and practice?

The theme clearly resonates with archivists trying to be more introspective, asking what we should do about the power dynamics that exists at the core of our work. But it also asks the question: what is home? What archives have we been building so far? Does it need improvement, renovation or, more radically, foundational work? I am truly looking forward to discussing these important questions during the conferences.

Can you tell us about your research approach and perspectives?

My work emerges from the “exploitation” framework studied by Yvon Lemay and Anne Klein, which places the uses of archives as an integral part of their trajectory. What especially interests me is the non-traditional uses of archives (or material that is called archives) and how they reveal blind spots in archival science. My dissertation, for example, explores the notions of the unarchived and the unarchivable through absence, invisible, forbidden, and unthinkable.

The COVID-19 pandemic has been a challenging time for all, archives notwithstanding. A large part of outreach and access to archives involves physical appointments to view archives and collections. Like many other archives, I had in-person archival launches planned for the spring of 2020 that were postponed indefinitely due to the global pandemic. The launch of the S. J. V. Chelvanayakam Fonds, organized by a faculty member, the donor, and myself, was planned to have several multidisciplinary international scholars and community members who would interact with the archive and plan a talk around their findings. Through grants, we intended to fund the speakers’ travel and accommodation. Several months after our library shut down in-person services in March 2020, it was apparent that we needed to adapt our planning to fit around the long-term restrictions that many countries were facing. 

The S. J. V. Chelvanayakam Fonds is a personal and professional collection that was created in Sri Lanka. The archive was safeguarded and brought with the family when they immigrated to Canada. It was apparent that this fonds would attract many scholars from around the world, and not just Toronto. 

The event, held in February 2021, served a dual purpose: announcing the acquisition of the archive and opening the digitized portion of the collection. Four months prior to the event, we selected which digitized files were relatively low risk to release online to the public. This was done in consultation with members of the community and our international Tamil Advisory Group. Three months prior, the faculty member selected our potential speakers and researchers. The finding aid was released online as well as the approved digital professional files. In the final two months prior to the event began the logistics and promotional planning which entailed a great deal of work. For the logistics planning, I found planning a clear timeline, schedule, tasks, and roles of participants, using a tool like Excel or other planning tool, was immensely helpful to track all of the details. 

Statistics:

Pre-registered: 287 

Attended: 196  

Number of attendees who registered in advance and attended: 122 

Number of attendees who registered day-of and attended: 74 

Countries attended: 8 (Canada, France, India, Netherlands, Norway, Sri Lanka, UK, USA) 

Total time of event: 183 minutes 

Average attendee time: 105 minutes 

We expected that this launch would garner international interest and planned accordingly. We chose to plan the webinar launch at 9am EST, a time at which we hoped that many people from Sri Lanka could join, which is 10.5 hours ahead of EST. Luckily, our institution has access to the Zoom webinar feature which allows for an unlimited number of people and we also used the Interpretation feature so we could make the event bilingual in Tamil, the other language of the fonds. Of course, this launch was not planned in a silo. We had the benefit of working with our Informational and Technology Services department, who helped us set up the Zoom webinar registration according to our preferences, as well as hosting a trial webinar one day prior to the event that proved to be essential with the organizers, speakers, and interpreter. We had a number of staff on hand to assist day-of, with such tasks as fielding questions in the Zoom Q & A box, and also switching the cameras between speakers. After creating promotional posters and emails, our communications team and alumni relations helped spread the word of the event through social media and listservs.  

There were both advantages and disadvantages in having an online archival launch. A clear advantage is that the budget was significantly less than what would have been necessary for an in-person event. As we wanted to invite several international scholars and speakers, there was no need to pay for flight and hotel costs. One of the greatest obstacles overcome by an online launch is breaking the barrier of access: we had a significant number of 196 attendees who attended from eight countries. One of the disadvantages is not being able to provide technical support to attendees, or the event not reaching possible attendees due to lack of technical knowledge or access to Zoom. We tried to overcome this by making registration information very clear. We sent out many reminders to pre-registrants, which included the Zoom link to the webinar, including one final reminder the morning of the event. As you can see from the statistics, however, 74 people still registered the day of the event, which proves that day-of mass communication of the event is essential. To overcome any technical obstacles for attendees, we had slides during the first five minutes of the webinar demonstrating how to turn on the Interpretation feature and how to ask a question. Every five to ten minutes, these instructions were repeated in the chat to new participants and for reminders.  

We did not know what to expect for an online archive launch but the feedback we received greatly exceeded our expectations, most likely thanks to our speakers who used the archive creatively and thoughtfully in their presentations. Our attendees were engaged all throughout, seeing as how many attendees stayed throughout most of the 183 minutes of the webinar. The attendees also asked thought-provoking questions during the Q & A period. Based on my experience organizing this online archive launch, online events can be as engaging as in-person events. In this scenario, we reached a wider audience than would have been possible at a physical archive launch. If you are curious about hosting an online archives event, please take a look at our webinar recording for the S. J. V. Chelvanayakam Fonds.

Tanis Franco

Tanis Franco is the Archivist at the University of Toronto Scarborough where they acquire, process, and facilitate access to archives and digital collections in the Archives and Special Collections unit. Franco has over 9 years of experience working with archives in university and cultural heritage settings and holds a Master of Information Studies from McGill University and a Master of English Literature from Concordia University.

As any young professional will know, having the support and guidance of senior staff can be the biggest blessing and privilege. Their words of wisdom and wealth of experience are invaluable and can make the difference in a young professional’s career.  For me, one of those people is Paulette Dozois (PD), now retired Senior Lead Archivist at Library and Archives Canada (LAC). Paulette spoke to me in early February about her career, a phone call that lasted only an hour but that could have continued for days.

Without mentioning any dates (!!) Paulette told me about the beginning of her career working at LAC as an Assistant Archivist in Private Records (or the Manuscript Division) and then as an Archivist (HR-02), where she worked on the MacKenzie King diaries, the Robert Borden fonds, the “four unknowns” — John Abbott, John Thompson, Mackenzie Bowell and Charles Tupper —  then the Richard B. Bennett fonds. Following her time here she transferred to Public Records (also known as Government Records) where she had many different responsibilities but settled with the Department of External Affairs fonds (Foreign Affairs) for twenty years. Her final ten years at LAC were spent working on the Block Review project with the Access to Information and Privacy (ATIP) group.

In addition to her time in the Archives Division at LAC, Paulette also spent a year in Policy, a year at the Directorate of History and Heritage at the Department of National Defense, and spent some time working on a contract with the Yukon Archives in Private Records.

Paulette was awarded the Archives Association of Ontario’s JJ Talman award in 2020 —  a testament to her dedication and leadership in the archival profession. Heralded as a champion of researcher’s rights, Paulette received the award for “her innovative approach to access” through the “identification and examination of representative parts of the archival record and opening the records based on the findings.” The full text of the award citation is available online and includes a very funny anecdote about white gloves!

Caption: Image of Paulette Dozois, courtesy of Rodney Carter.

Alt-text: A photograph of Paulette Dozois wearing a red scarf.

RM: What did you study?  Did you choose your degree based on a desire to work in archives?

PD: "There was none of that back in the dark ages!"

Paulette holds a Master of Arts in Canadian History from Carleton University. While completing her work for this degree she did research at the then Public Archives of Canada and was inspired by the work she saw being done there. She said that she’s an "unedumacated archivist"!

This led to an interesting discussion about the formal education of archivists in Canada. Paulette told me about the aptly-named “Archives course” that new archivists took within about the first five years of being hired. It was a 6-week course delivered by the Public Archives of Canada to archivists across the country with upwards of 50 students at a time.

Through the course she learned the “basics of archives.” During that era, PAC had three types of archivists: special media, private and government. There were no reference or access archivists then as each group of archivists did their own reference work. But with the advent of Access to Information and Privacy legislation, government records were being transferred to LAC “in tsunamis [and] Reference Services came into being as a point of necessity because of the volume of requests.”

Paulette told me that “when she started, the [Prime Minister] records up to St. Laurent were all right there on the 3rd floor of [395 Welllington]! You could just walk down the hall and get a box and bring it down to your desk. The government archivists were up on the 7th floor with the tiny windows! Users were sent right upstairs to see archivists; the building was much more open in that way.”

Caption: Photograph of Library and Archives Canada Ottawa research facility at 395 Wellington Street in Ottawa, Ontario.  Photograph by Sophie Tellier (LAC).

Alt text: Image of large building flanked by banners that read “Library and Archives Canada - Bibliothèque et Archives Canada.”

RM: What were your impressions of the field, or of the work, when you "joined"? 

PD: The field was "predominantly, overwhelmingly male and now it's mostly female I think. When I was in the manuscript division first, there were a few women who'd been there a while, the government archives division, when I put my name on the transfer list, the equal opportunities for women had cited the division because there were no female [archivists], just one female [senior archivist] Barbara Wilson.” Paulette did emphasize that she “never had any trouble, [her colleagues were] very respectful.”

RM: Looking back, what are some of the major shifts you've lived through with regard to archival work?

PD: "[In] the beginning the archivist did almost all function: reference, custodial, appraisal, acquisition. […] The archivist was really in charge of those records. You did it all. Over time, the amount of authority that a particular archivist has over a fonds has diminished. [...] It had to happen. [...] So much changed when ATIP came in. Our responsibilities increased intensely."

Her advice is that "archivists should be part of the decisions," because silos won’t serve the record well. “There is just one record.”

I asked Paulette about her involvement with the ACA.

PD: “[I] started in the early 1980s on the membership committee, and then the membership chair for a long time. Then I was on the Public Relations committee and I was chair when we did the booklets like Business Archives." Paulette recalls organizing a pop-up frame to set up behind the table at events, getting the ACA out and present in the community. She started publishing and giving papers, and was on the editorial team for Archivaria for a while. At this point in the interview Paulette paused as if this was the extent of it, only to continue by mentioning that she was on 4 or 5 program committees for conferences, chaired the Newfoundland conference program committee in 1993 (Between The Rock and a Hard Place: Archival Theory and Practice). And it didn’t stop there: "I was the one who got approval for the special interest section on access and privacy issues in the 1990s." Paulette also spoke to the importance of the annual conference as an opportunity to establish and maintain the "links across the country that make the ACA a strong organization."

Caption: Cover page of the Business Archives booklet published by the ACA in 2000.  Copyright Association of Canadian Archivists.

Alt-text: A blue and white rectangular image that serves as the cover page for a booklet entitled “Business Archives” with various images representing industry such as an oil rig, textual documents, machines, a satellite and a factory-like setting.

RM: What advice might you give to a young or aspiring archivist?

PD: "Dress properly (laughter). You know there was a time it was unheard of for an archivist to show up with jeans on. Just not done. [...] Have fun! If there's one word to describe how I feel about my career it's LUCKY. There were some tough times but we got through them."

I think I speak for many when I say that I feel incredibly lucky to have worked with Paulette, to have had her ear, her kind smile, and to have been able to sit in the corner of her very full office furiously scribbling notes as she told me stories and shared her wisdom on finding aids to restricted files and a few detours in between. Congratulations to Paulette on her well-deserved retirement!

Rebecca Murray

Rebecca Murray (RM) is a Senior Archivist in the Reference Services Division at Library and Archives Canada in Ottawa, Ontario.  She is also a member of the ACA’s Outreach Committee and Mentorship Program.  She sometimes wears jeans to the office but will now never do so without thinking first of Paulette’s advice!

For many staff in Libraries, Archives, and Museums (LAMs), it is difficult to carve out time to craft a competitive grant project, find an appropriate grant to apply for, and successfully work through the grant application.
There are resources available, but many fail to cover all areas of the grant process, and many more are too generalized to be effectively deployed in a LAM setting. Very few are comprehensive to LAMs, provide grant specifications, or offer advanced searching. There are no grant templates that allow LAM staff to plug in content and create applications. Fundamentally, there is no all-inclusive LAM grant toolkit.

Lucidea- provider of the ArchivEra and Argus collections management systems as well as industry-leading library automation and knowledge management software—partnered with grants expert Rachael Cristine Woody to provide a solution to these problems. They now deliver a single venue to meet the majority of grant needs, and have created a LAM grant toolkit—including a comprehensive grant database spanning Libraries, Archives, and Museums, with opportunities in the United States and Canada. Users can quickly see opportunities that best match their needs, with specifications such as: deadline, award range, and project theme—the most important things you must know to determine if the grant opportunity is a good fit. This resource provides LAMs with access to over $200 million annually—especially meaningful when budgets are constrained during COVID.

The toolkit is designed to empower LAM professionals by providing all the information and tools needed to confidently apply for grants. Included is a LAM grant workbook that introduces every typical grant application field and provides four grant application templates. It guides users through each application area, outlines what content is needed in order to be successful, and inspires action with four plug-and-play project frameworks.

Lucidea invites you to view the Grants Directory and/or download a copy of the grant workbook.

Rima Ghanem

Rima Ghanem is a Cultural Sector Research Analyst at Lucidea, where her primary focus is on archival and museum collection management systems. Rima holds an MA in Cultural Management from Université Saint-Joseph and an MAS from the University of British Columbia. Prior to Lucidea, Rima worked at Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art in Qatar, and other MENA region heritage organizations.