2021 in review

Some highlights from 17.5 hours/week in an unusual year at Oak Bay Archives:

January

10 enquiries
move planning, future office layout etc planning
photographing core historic record series for answering enquiries while away from the collections: long and short appraisal cards, building permit books, some maps. An indexing project is underway but we still refer to the originals.
school outreach - virtual presentation to GNS grade 4
packing! So. Much. Packing. All office supplies and non-original materials were packed up for offsite storage, while the archives remained in situ (but also required packing/preparation). Most furniture was emptied for offsite storage; the largest and heaviest filing cabinets and map chests remained on site.

February

11 enquiries
preparing repositories for deep storage in the midst of a construction project - rearranging shelf contents, reboxing, loading mobile racking between fixed shelving runs
Because I had started early, I was able to lend a hand at the end of the packing exercise to the rest of the Corporate Services team packing up records in the main municipal vault, plus Heritage Foundation and Commission records stored elsewhere, as members of those bodies were not able to be on site.
end of Feb started working from home, eventually until end of August

March - August

Working from home. Because of COVID-19, I had already been answering answering all enquiries remotely rather than in person. Remote enquiries (received by post, email or phone) make up a large percentage of any archive's enquiry traffic at any time - but that number has been 100% for all of my time at Oak Bay so far. Until renovations started, I had been able to come in to the office and work with the collections, but while working from home, there were of course many parts of my job that were simply suspended. I couldn't receive new accessions, check original material in response to enquiries, or do any new cataloguing (arrangement and description of collections).

I could, however

receive and respond to enquiries by remote means
answer most enquiries at least in part, and often in more depth than I might normally have time for, using online resources and digital images I had taken in preparation for the move.
progress some retrospective cataloguing, up to the point of needing final checks against the original material
become more familiar with relevant online research resources
complete several pieces of continuing professional development training
review historic donations and accessions documentation
progress emergency response planning for the Archives
develop ideas for future volunteer projects and training
maintain a social media presence via Twitter and here on Connect
plan the office, repository and reading room layouts for the changed space in Municipal Hall, with furniture requirements
continue to stay in touch with Archives volunteers via regular email bulletins and Zoom chats
continue to attend Corporate Services staff and heritage Foundation meetings, which were already on Zoom

Enquiry numbers: March 20, April 9, May 7, June 6, July 12, August 12. Total: 66.

Many thanks to project manager Dave Cockle, who regularly reassured me that the archives were safe and secure, and permitted me occasional site visits to see for myself! The move alone was a huge undertaking with an enormous number of moving parts - it and the renovations went smoothly and on schedule. And the archives were fine.

Thanks to COVID-19-related closures, my colleagues across Canada and around the world had already been working mostly from home for over a year before I had to deal with it, so a list of possibilities was waiting for me to plan my time away from the collections. I found lots of ideas via Emily Lonie's post at Things I'm Fonds Of - scroll down to the 'Advice for Archivists Working From Home' section.

September

14 enquiries
return to the Archives office
dust everything twice!
reopen and unpack repositories
move material and shelves into new storage area
set up office and reading room including subject files and reference library
weed ca. 100 duplicates from reference library
update reference library spine labels

October

13 enquiries
receive all Archives emergency supplies back from OBEP storage (with huge thanks to OBEP Manager Eileen Grant)
sort/assemble/repackage and find storage places for above

November

18 enquiries
MH foyer display for Remembrance Day: Willows Camp at the Fairgrounds during WW1, with blog post
MH foyer display: 1925 tax auction property sale brochure

December

11 enquiries (logged before Christmas)
MH foyer display: Historic Weather Events, with blog post

Enquiries total: 143

Blog posts: 10

Ongoing projects:

Copy loans documentation: identifying which photos in the archives' collections are prints and/or digital images of originals held in other archives or in private collections temporarily loaned for the purpose. This is important because in all cases, researchers need to be aware of the original source of the image, and in many cases, Oak Bay Archives has no authority to grant permission for others to use these images.

Tweets: 125, total 70K impressions. The year's top tweets were all in the April #Archive30 series, which was great fun as well, so I'll be running that again in 2022.

New accessions: 5

Volunteer e-bulletins: 13

Volunteer Zoom chats: 11 + one in-person lunch! (distanced, outside, in the summer)

Tasks remaining from the move: complete locations register for repositories, complete grab list (locations register) for emergency supplies. Ongoing dusting!

2021 was another eventful and anomalous year. I still have many collections to familiarize myself with, so much more cataloguing to do, digitization, reboxing, identifying items for conservation... I still feel very new to the job and constantly impatient to get more done, but I have to remind myself that

I have yet to work a day of 'formerly normal' conditions in the archives,
I still haven't been in post for the full time equivalent of a full year
the large and experienced team of archives volunteers have not been able to work with me on site at all
I was away from the collections for fully 50% of 2021
planning and preparing for the renovations took huge amounts of time in both 2020 and 2021
learning new things every day means you know more things every day

There's always more to learn; an archivist's response to the same question, or type of question, after 10 years in a post should be better than after one year. Unfortunately, we rarely get the same question twice! Never stop learning, or asking questions.

2022 holds some new projects that were brewing last year - we hope the present pandemic conditions will just disappear one day, but looking ahead, we have to plan for hybrid online/in person or all-online services, and maybe further rounds of rapid changes. This all takes extra time and thought, and finding new ways of working, but it should make our plans more resilient to change.