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#Archive30 - April 2026

14 April 2026

#Archive30 2026 prompts list from the Scottish Archives & Records Association — #Archive30 2026 from the Scottish Archives & Records Association

It's that time of year again: April is #Archive30 season!

Check out past seasons of #Archive30 @Oak Bay Archives on Connect:

Day 1 #YourArchive - Welcome to #Archive30 from Oak Bay Archives at Municipal Hall! We're starting late but will be catching up next week, so follow along here, on Facebook, and in the display case upstairs in the main foyer. #Archive30

Day 2 #ArchiveBuildings The Oak Bay Archives are on the ground floor /basement level of Municipal Hall, 2167 Oak Bay Ave. From the side entrance by Fairway, press the buzzer to connect via intercom. #Archive30

Day 3 #ArchiveFashion essential accessories: hand lens for small details, pencil only (no erasers!), lead weighting for holding down e.g. rolled maps #Archive30

Day 4 Behind every front door are so many #UntoldStories... Check out this book about the history of the houses and people on just one block of St Patrick St! The authors drew on archival sources at Oak Bay Archives and elsewhere.

More about: https://oakbayheritagefoundation.ca/wp/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/28-31-st-patrick-street.pdf

Read online: http://www.webturf.com/oakbay/history/downloads/St_Patrick_Street.pdf

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Day 5 Detailed fire insurance map covering Oak Bay, printed 1925 and updated until 1950, is one of the most #PopularItem s in the archives, and an invaluable resource for most house history enquiries. This volume also qualifies as #SomethingBig as it measures 2 feet square and almost 4 inches thick. More about: University of Victoria Libraries hosts digital images of similar fire insurance plans from BC Archives online at http://vault.library.uvic.ca/collections/6cf241ab-b4ef-44c2-8b6c-38a9de32f7d5 #Archive30

Day 6 #SomethingSmall are these two 3 x 3.5” undated artist’s renditions of the Oak Bay Marina Restaurant, opened 1964, both on a postcard (OBA Accn 2012/10/32). Who was the artist? #Archive30

Day 7 Some #ArchiveAnimals - a swan, chickens, dogs, a cat, and horses, from the Taylor, Hinkins-Unwin, Burrell, and Pattinson albums. More about: browse Oak Bay Archives photos at https://www.flickr.com/people/oakbayarchives/ #Archive30

Day 8 Isn't everything past in an archive? Well - some things find an unexpected new future as part of #ArchivePast, such as this retired safe, which holds some of the small collections at Oak Bay Archives. #Archive30

Day 9 #SportArchives:

1) Oak Bay Girls' Drill Team debut performance at a garden party held at the home of Mr and Mrs Gordon Cameron, June 4, 1945. OBA PHOT 1994-016-025 Photographer: McCrimmon.
2) Marjorie Taylor tees off, OBA PR 235 Taylor Album 1 83E.
3) Jessie Wootton (i.e. Jessie Adela Sansbury Wootton Catt, formerly Rugg) at 1064 Beverley Place on the Burrells' tennis court, ca. 1915. OBA PHOT 2010-010-205.

Day 10 One of the #CommunityArchives collections we continue to accrue donations for is the Oak Bay Tea Party collection. Here are some photos of the Tea Party Parades in 1978 and 1981, donated by Gwen Shingles, OBA Accn 2004/7. Featuring float preparations, a streetcar replica, the Oak Bay High School marching band (those agonizing white shoes!!) and of course tweed, they capture the community effort, involvement, and festive atmosphere of the event. Note that "Atlantic City" (1980 romantic crime film directed by Louis Malle) is playing at the Oak Bay Theatre in the background. These photos are in copyright in Canada. #Archive30

Day 11 #CataloguingArchives, otherwise known as arrangement & description, is an activity that's always going on in the background at any archive. It's a painstaking and complex process, requiring knowledge of cataloguing standards and guidelines, background research, and understanding of technical terms and jargon. Because it's all in the background until it's finished, the time and focus involved is rarely shown, and it's often put on the back burner in favour of more urgent or user-facing projects. But it's the backbone of everything we do. (And yes, it is not the same as library cataloguing.) More about archival cataloguing: https://aabc.ca/Arrangement-and-Description #Archive30

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Day 12 #SomethingBig in the archives that shows a lot of small details is this 43x60" mounted print of a 1929 Royal Canadian Air Force aerial photo of "Victoria and Vicinity", part of the Topographical Survey of Canada. This detail shows two major features of north Oak Bay that no longer exist: The Patrick Arena (photographed in its last year of existence) near bottom left, near the junction of Cadboro Bay and Cranmore Rd; and further north, the race track and exhibition buildings at the Willows Fairgrounds. These photos remain in Crown copyright in Canada. Yellow annotations added for this post. #Archive30

Day 13 There are already several examples of #ColourfulArchives above, but for the 13th we feature a rather special presentation to Miss Isabella Cathcart (1872-1950) from the "pupils, staff, and ex-pupils of Monterey School and well-wishers of Oak Bay" on the occasion of her retirement in 1935. Her obituary appeared in the Victoria Daily Times on 9 February 1950: https://archive.org/details/victoriadailytimes1950-02-09/page/n15/mode/2up

Day 14 The advertising ephemera category is usually a good source of #UnusualArchives; today's is a fun example, an embossed cutout card with paper calendar from 1961, advertising Wright's Quality Meats & Delicatessen at 2215-17 Oak Bay Avenue, in the Bell Block. The illustration shows a boy wearing a red cap and neckerchief, butcher's apron, and slippers, riding a large pink pig through a wooded landscape. The boy is holding on to the pig by one of its ears, and under his arm is a long pole with a large ham and two sausage rings hanging from it, dangling above and in front of the pig. Wright's itself was far from #Unusual, occupying a longstanding location for a succession of butcher and grocery stores in Oak Bay Village from the building of the Bell Block in 1913 until 1971.(source)

Day 15 The large mounted photo print mentioned above at #12 needs some #ArchiveConservation as it has been forcibly unrolled and flattened for mounting on foamcore, using modern adhesive tape to attach the print to the mount and to secure a number of edge tears.

But let's talk about encapsulating maps, which means enclosing in a "plastic sandwich" on both sides. If you're interested in a technical digression, click here...

Day 16 Perhaps the most persistent of #ArchiveMyths is that white cotton gloves are mandatory and/or desirable when consulting all kinds of archival material. They are not! We do use gloves when consulting potentially contaminated materials, or specific kinds of materials, such as photographs or metal objects, which are highly sensitive to the moisture, oils, and salt that can be present on bare hands. But for handling most paper and parchment documents, and for special materials that are particularly delicate and fragile, any gloves can cause more damage than clean dry hands.

More from curators at the Smithsonian, The British Library, and the UK National Archives. The Canadian Conservation Institute provides a nuanced discussion about which gloves and when to use them for different conditions and materials in archival and museum collections, here.

Day 17 It's all about the box. #ArchiveStorage is an important topic from the smallest polyester sleeve to the largest remotely-controlled off-site repository, but the basic building block is the archival box.

Since the majority of organizational (and indeed personal) archival records are on more or less standard letter/A4 or legal/foolscap paper, the standard boxes are too. There are also many pre-made box sizes to fit particular sizes and formats of records, and custom possibilities for unusually shaped and over sized items. Pictured above, vertical and horizontal Hollinger boxes. These are the most commonly used for standard sized paper records.

An archival box should be made of acid/lignin free buffered boxboard with reinforced edges/corners, although metal edges may be overkill for any other than large and very busy repositories, or the most frequently consulted collections.

I prefer horizontal boxes with a full detached lid. Inside the box, I like to use 4-flap folders or 3-sided envelopes with or without a non-gummed flap for storing files or individual items rather than open-sided file folders.

More than you ever wanted to know about archival preservation materials and equipment:

Canada: https://www.carrmclean.ca/archival-supplies.html

UK: Preservation Equipment

Conservation By Design (CXD)

Secol archival polyester

US: Hollinger Metaledge

#Archive30

Day 18 For #ArchivePresent (and also #SomethingSmall), two items of ephemera, decorative Christmas present tags in contrasting styles, one harking back to traditional English Victorian imagery, and the other more modern/Art Deco-esque. (OBA Accn 2002/3) #Archive30

Day 19 There are at least three definitions of #DigitalArchives : one is an electronic system for organizing, maintaining/preserving, and making available born-digital electronic records that are no longer required for current business; this is an electronic equivalent to the traditional paper-based physical archive, and may exist alongside and as a successor to it. Another is a collection of electronic copies of physical records, often created as access and preservation surrogates, which may be arranged to mirror the hierarchical system of arrangement of the physical archive. A third is a curated collection of digital objects (images, text, data etc) presented as an online exhibition. Oak Bay Archives' electronic records are mainly the second type.

Day 20 I'm sometimes asked #AboutAppraisals, meaning appraisal of the monetary or market value of an archive. Archival appraisal is something different. "Appraisal involves determining the archival value of possible acquisitions and their suitability for your institution. Appraisal is perhaps the most intellectually demanding job an archivist will perform. There is no convenient formula for appraising archival material; each group of records must be assessed in relation to: administrative value, age, physical quantity, type of material (record formats and media), uniqueness, physical quality, time span, accessibility, use, suitability according to accession policy (collection remit), etc." MfSA pp.26 ff.

More in the Manual for Small Archives from the Archives Association of BC: https://aabc.ca/Archivist-Toolkit

Often what's meant is monetary appraisal of archival records, usually for tax receipt purposes - that's a different thing requiring specialist training and membership of the National Archival Appraisal Board.

https://naab59175.wildapricot.org/

https://ccperb-cceebc.gc.ca/en/resources/documents/strategies-for-monetary-appraisals-of-archival-cultural-property.pdf

https://www2.archivists.org/groups/accessioning-acquisitions-appraisal-section/monetary-appraisal-of-archival-material

Day 21 An #ArchivePlan for a house formerly at 815 Monterey Avenue - built 1941, demolished 1968.