2023 in review

Some highlights from 17.5 hours/week at Oak Bay Archives in 2023:

Arrangement & Description (Cataloguing):

Local history reference files: index new online here
Local history reference files: 8 large drawers reversed for easy access and filing
Community records @Oak Bay Archives: live and updatable list now on Connect here Formerly a list of 6 items, now 125, more to come.
MemoryBC: arranging, describing and digitizing several small previously unprocessed collections of mostly photos, and uploading draft fonds descriptions to MemoryBC.
OBA PR 104 Harold & Sally Francis photos: new detailed listing of online here
archivist successfully completed AABC course on managing oral history collections, projects and programs
OBA PR131 Logan Mayhew House plans etc updated file list new online here
OBA PR 231 Dr Larry McCann's research papers about John Olmsted's design of the Uplands and many other planned suburbs, file list new online here
Marion Cumming books: received a donation of books and papers for the archives reference files and library from Marion Cumming's estate. The books are in the archives' online library catalogue https://www.librarything.com/catalog/OakBayArchives(External link) and featured in an MH foyer display over the summer.

Digitization:

OBA PR 132/01 Kootenays photo album online View on Flickr
OBA PR 132 Burgess diary digitized, transcribed, and posted online: a 353-page, 40,000 word diary written by Mrs Mary Burgess of Bentinck Ontario in 1907-1908, during part of the time she and her husband spent in Central/North Saanich helping their daughter and her husband establish their farm and care for their then 2 small children. More about the transcription project here.
OBA PR 104 Francis photos (150 images) online View here
OBA PR 198 Bert Howell photo collection: continuing work on several hundred individual film negatives and glass plates from the 1900’s to 1920’s. Bertram Howell (1877-1972), formerly of Marrion St., was an Oak Bay electrician and prolific photographer.

Outreach:

Attended Heritage Foundation meetings throughout the year
Created a new Archives leaflet
provided binder "On the Street Where You Live" for St Patrick street party, containing extracts from city directories 1910-1998, index of building permits for the street 1909-1971, list of street names & changes, archives leaflet.
virtual class visit with the Grade Fours at GNS
featured in the ‘Tea With’ article in the spring Tweed magazine (p.18)! While press interviews are not a standard thing for municipal staff, this one was a good way to introduce what would normally be my rather more public-facing face, and get some information about the archives out into the community.
Display, MH foyer and online: using digitized historic city directories for local history research
Display, MH foyer and online: Marion Cumming gift

Volunteer program:

preparation for restarting in-person Archives visits, Archives volunteers and enquirers back on site - full revision of the volunteers' handbook (previous version 2013) and creating additional policy & procedure documents, project descriptions etc, to form an archives volunteer program structure.
meetings in April & June with Archives volunteers, Director and Deputy Director of Corporate Services, Cllr Watson (Archives Liaison)
restarted monthly volunteers' bulletins

The archives reopened to researchers in person by appointment 9.30-4 Tuesdays and Fridays at the end of June. In mid-July, two archives volunteers returned for weekly work slots. By the end of the year, 4 new regular volunteers had joined us, and several more people had expressed interest in volunteering in the new year.

Volunteer work in 2023 totalled 110 person-hours, and included:

indexing Oak Bay's historic building permits - continuing an long-standing project
indexing the contents of demolished-property files transferred from the Building & Planning department - catching up on another ongoing project
reference files - overhaul & 2 add recent large accessions
physical numbering of items in a new accession of personal papers
maps survey: - listing and photographing rolled oversize maps/plans/drawings
tagging (subject indexing) photos online - remote project
oral history transcripts - checking/revising

Public drop-in hours resumed on Tuesday mornings 10am-1pm (restoring and extending the pre-2020 Tuesday 9.30-12 slot). There were 14 in-person enquiries in the latter half of 2023, <1 per week and 9% of the year's total.

Some numbers:

Enquiries: 149. 14 in person, 10 by phone, a couple of letters, the rest (83%) by email
Images created: 1100
Images uploaded to Flickr: 11,500
Blog posts: 14
Tweets: only about a dozen tweets. X has changed the analytics function so I don't have a sum total of views for this year.
Flickr views: 27.7K in 2023
Volunteer e-bulletins: 3

Summary

Change, as usual

Once again, the numbers show a change in emphasis in my work from last year to this. Much of my time in the first half of 2023 was occupied with creating new documentation for a structured archives volunteer program, in preparation for bringing volunteers back on site. The latter half of 2023 has been my first experience at Oak Bay Archives of having volunteers and the researching public back in person. I had 3 different line managers in the course of the year.

Making it work - volunteers & researchers on site in a smaller space

Space-wise, we are now working in the "new normal" - because we no longer have access to the big meeting room that used to adjoin the reference library area, we have max 4 work stations available at any one time, and we only have one table large enough to accommodate maps, plans, or most oversize material. With the archivist and two volunteers working on Tuesday mornings, one drop-in visitor brings us up to capacity! There has not been a great rush of drop-ins; most people seem to have grown used to being able to email or phone in their enquiry and receive an electronic response, with images and more information attached or linked for download.

Increasing Discoverability

Looking ahead, my own work is concentrated as much as possible on improving descriptions of the collections, and making those descriptions accessible - that is, archival cataloguing. An underlying, and related, massive project is a full assessment of the "described-ness" and "findability" of the collections: there is a summary list of most of the holdings, but what exactly is in each box? In many cases the most detailed list of the contents is on the outside of a folder or envelope, rather than in any printed or electronic catalogue, so as I physically open each box and check the contents, I am thinking about questions such as:

what needs appraisal and weeding?
does the list on this folder exist elsewhere, or do I need to copy it?
Does it correspond to the box or folder's contents?
which collections, files or items have not yet been described in detail?
what donor/accession information is on record for each collection?
which collections have photographic elements that need digitising? have some been scanned and not others?
are any of these items modern prints of copy loans rather than original material in the OBA collections? If so, are they identified as such, and is their source identified? Copy loans should not be accessioned as though they were original archival material - they should be in the reference files.
are any of these items printed books that should be transferred to the OBA reference library shelves and catalogue?
which items are in fragile condition and may need conservation repairs?
What sizes and shapes of files need new acid-free boxes, folders and envelopes?

So far, results and research outcomes of increased descriptions online are still on a small scale, but my anecdotal observation is that there is plenty of substantial content for research and public interest in the collections, and there is a lively research community - professionals, academics, students, local historians, and the researching public - ready to engage with collections as soon as descriptions can be made available.

I hope the increasing visibility and findability of Oak Bay's collections online will encourage enquirers and researchers, and that it will prompt those considering what to do in the long term with their personal, business, or family collections of letters, diaries, administrative records, photographs, drawings, and other forms of textual and visual records to think of Oak Bay Archives as a good option.

- Anna Sander, March 2024

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Questions? Please get in touch!

Website: https://www.oakbay.ca/archives

Photo Search: https://www.oakbay.ca/archives/photographs

Blog posts: https://connect.oakbay.ca/archives

Email: archives@oakbay.ca(

Phone: 250-598-3290

- Post by Anna Sander, April 2023.

To cite: Sander, Anna. (2023, April). '2023 in review.' [Blog post]. District of Oak Bay, Archives. Retrieved from https://connect.oakbay.ca/archives/news_feed/2023-in-review [date accessed].