Archives Q&A

Capturing some of the excellent questions from a recent school session:

Q: When did the Oak Bay Archives start?

A: The Municipality started producing and keeping its own records in 1906, and some of our personal and family papers are even older than that, but the District Archives were formally started by a team of dedicated volunteers, mainly for collecting community records, in 1994. The volunteer team was able to bring in a professional consultant archivist for a few hours a week starting in 2012, and that position grew into a half-time municipal employee role in 2016. I'm the District's second professional archivist and I started here in May 2020.

Q: Why are the Archives at Municipal Hall?

A: The corporate records, which are the core of any institutional archive, are created and used here, and stored until their current-business 'life' is finished, so from a District point of view it makes sense to have the historic archives under the same roof, for easy transfer and reference, and good coordination with current and semicurrent records management. The Municipal hall is in the heart of Oak Bay and is the centre of local government, so it's also a logical location for the collection of community records. There isn't another building nearby that could provide public access space, staff working space and large volumes of secure storage space. In other municipalities, amenities are different: Esquimalt and Saanich both accommodate their archives in community centre buildings separate from their municipal halls, though very close by in Esquimalt's case, and the City of Victoria Archives are just across Centennial Square from City Hall.

Q: Why are the Archives in the basement?

A: Archives very often are in the basement! Sometimes that's where the available storage space is, sometimes it's less desirable office space. At Oak Bay, it's very convenient to have the Archives on the lower floor because there's room for researchers, staff, extensive reference materials and archives storage, all with a step-free entrance near by. Using the side entrance, Archives researchers can (normally) come straight to the Archives without needing to go through main reception upstairs. And it doesn't feel like a basement - it's dry and we have big windows that open onto the lawn :D

Q: What do archives do?

"Archives" can mean both historic records and the places where they are preserved and consulted.

- Archival records show the written parts of organizational functions and people's lives. Sometimes this includes visual records and other media as well.

- Archival repositories provide a safe place for historic records to be stored, preserved and processed by archivists and consulted by researchers. Provenance documentation and custodial continuity are a key part of archivists' work, because they support records' authenticity - that is, by systematically recording where records come from and having systems in place for tracking access to them, we can be sure that what we have now is the same as what we had years ago, and hasn't been deliberately or accidentally changed - or if changes have occurred (such as further accessions, weeding, conservation work, flood damage etc) those changes are identified and added to the descriptions.

Q: Are the archives arranged alphabetically like the school library?

No - we arrange some of the small collections of single or very few items in boxes in order of acquisition, purely for efficient storage and ease of finding. We arrange larger fonds (series of records systematically created by the same person or organization) as they were created and used, often by function and chronological order. Because archival items and collections vary in size and shape, archivists often store them according to size or appropriate housing rather than in alphabetical or chronological order. We use location registers to check what's where on each shelf.

Q: Have any of Oak Bay's archives been stolen or gone missing?

Not that we know of. But there have been some mishaps: creation and/or preservation of building permits in the earliest years of the municipality wasn't consistent, many building records were lost in a bad winter flood in 1949, and others were lost in a general clear-out at the time of the move to the present Municipal Hall building in the 1950s. Some of the latter were kept back from destruction and dispersed, so while they are lost to the Archives for now, it's still possible that they may turn up one day.

Q: How many archives are there in Oak Bay?

Since many archives are private, I don't know! I do know that there are many serious private collectors of local history records and memorabilia, and that schools, families, businesses and community organizations in Oak Bay do have their own archives: some examples are the Royal Victoria Yacht Club, Glenlyon-Norfolk School, the Oak Bay High School Alumni Association, and the photographs of Dr Jeffree Cunningham.

Q: How many things are there in Oak Bay's archives?

A: Short answer - I haven't counted them! Definitely tens of thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of individual items. I'll start by counting the number of linear shelf metres and boxes, so stay tuned for a better answer...

Q: What happens if we have an atmospheric river and it causes flooding, could the archives get flooded?

A: It could. We always have to allow for the possibility of natural and man-made disasters happening in the archives - problems arise more often than you might think, and most archivists will deal with at least a minor flood at some point in their careers. Many kinds of disasters cause a lot of damage, but they don't often completely destroy archives - repairing archival material is a highly trained specialist job known as archival conservation. We take as many preventive measures as possible, and also train and equip ourselves as well as we can to be prepared to respond to disasters quickly and effectively. Here's a good quick overview about archives disaster preparedness from Queensland State Archives in Australia, and a longer discussion with conservators from the Smithsonian Libraries and Archives in the United States.

Q: Do the archives take photos?

A: Do we go out and take pictures of how things are these days, and put them away for posterity? Not usually. That's active collecting, and archives tend to acquire by scheduled transfer or by donation. The difference in principle is an important one. - and so is working with record creators and donors who may create their own archives and collections through this kind of active documentation.

Do we take photos of the things we have so that more people can see them and do research with them, without having to come into the archives themselves? Definitely yes - this is called digitization and it's an important part of what we do, improving access to information in archival records while helping to reduce wear and tear on original materials.

So far, Oak Bay Archives has digital copies of some of its photographs online - they're available to browse and search here.

Q: Do the archives make copies of original records in case something happens to the originals?

Yes, 'insurance copies' are a good idea. We often photograph or scan the whole of a series of 'vital records', those that are essential for legal, business or research purposes. But in most cases we don't have the staff time, funding, equipment, electronic storage space, or urgent necessity to copy everything. Much of the digitization we do is in direct response to individual researchers' enquiries and requests.

Having surrogates (copies or substitutes), also called preservation copies or access copies, can also be helpful for providing access to popular records while sparing the original material from excessive wear and tear - think of newspaper microfilms, and now, digital versions. Old photographs are sensitive to light and surface damage, but any number of people can access digital images of the same information without causing any disturbance to the physical item.

Other advantages to using digital copies: users can usually look at photos at greater magnification than the original, several people can look at the same thing at the same time whether or not they are working together or in the same place or time zone, records can be viewed in different arrangements and combinations than the original (e.g. side-by-side comparison of photos from different pages in an album).

Header image: Effects of water damage to different formats of archival material, from an AABC emergency response salvage training workshop, November 2020. Photo: Anna Sander.