Most of these questions were not asked directly @OakBayArchives, but they're good ones!
Q: What's changed in the archives with the big renovations at Municipal Hall this year?
A: Have a look at a new photo tour post: https://connect.oakbay.ca/archives/news_feed/oak-bay-archives-photo-tour-october-2021
Q: @mihosalopek asked, "How much of your collections are actually open access and available digitally?"
A: There are several answers to this question, depending how you slice it.
Open Access:
- if by open access, you mean open stacks, none of the archives are open access - that is, researchers can't browse the shelves in the way you can in a public library. They are stored in locked, staff-only stacks, and produced to researchers in an invigilated search room. The reference library and historic city directories, subject files (newspaper cuttings and other collected printed sources re local history & heritage topics), and finding aids are all browsable in the search room.
- if you mean accessible to researchers on request, then most of our holdings are open access. There are legislated exceptions for records holding personal information (e.g. police, school) but these have defined closure periods and will eventually be made available according to the schedule. Donors of private records may also put reasonable closure periods on some of those records. Ideally, those closures are agreed and documented at the time of deposit, and regularly reviewed.
- Our intention is to make as much of our holdings available as possible, as soon as possible, in as many ways as possible. We have to balance this with legal requirements, usually for the protection of personal information. But there are some permitted exceptions to these closures as well, for the purposes of historical research.
The idea of open access has another aspect for archives: because archival holdings are unique by nature, the original records can't be borrowed/consulted outside the archives, and unlike library holdings, copies aren't (usually) held elsewhere. So 'open access' doesn't only include direct personal access to the records: it also means access to the information in the records for enquirers who aren't able to visit in person, by having an archivist available to research and respond to enquiries. And (work in progress) having finding aids and research guides online helps as well.
Available digitally:
- Oak Bay Archives holds a couple of fonds with some born-digital content. This is stored in electronic format but is not publicly available online. These records may include personal information, confidential business information that is still under a closure period, or copyright material. Some of this material can be made available to individual researchers in digital format.
- "Available digitally" may also mean "available online without having to specifically request it" - in this case, very little of Oak Bay's material is available online so far, only the selection of digital images of historic photographs here. In addition to any of the restrictions above that may apply, digitizing archival material has rapidly become a whole field in itself - it's not as simple as taking a photo of something and sticking it on the internet. Every image needs to be accompanied by appropriate metadata, or information about both the original and the copy. Remember that when you look at a digital image of an old photo online, that is not the same as looking at the original print (or negative) itself. There are some kinds of information you will not be able to obtain from the digital surrogate, and some things will be clearer in the digital image than in the original.
A digital archive is something else again. It may be an archive of born-digital related records, but very often this term is used to describe an online collection of thematically related, often born-analogue, historic records from disparate origins.
Q: from @ASUChicano, Question from Instagram Story: What types of things do you have in your collections? Are there just photographs? #AskAnArchivist
A: Historic photographs are some of our highest-profile and most used holdings, because many of them are available online, but as measured in shelf-metres or numbers of boxes, they occupy only a small fraction of our holdings of physical records. The corporate and personal fonds and collections in Oak Bay Archives include minute books, letters, cash books, all kinds of administrative registers/ledgers, research notes on loose paper and in bound volumes, oral history recordings and transcripts, dog tags, china teacups, maps, plans, architectural drawings and blueprints, posters, works of art on paper, newspaper cuttings and some digital storage formats.
Q: The archives have been closed for so long - how can archivists work without visitors and researchers? What are all the Archives volunteers doing?
A: The Archives have indeed been closed to volunteers, visitors and researchers in person since mid-March 2020 - a couple of months before I arrived to take up the post of professional archivist in May. I have not yet had one day of normal reading room conditions! Some volunteers are working on versions of their previous projects at home. I've been keeping them up to date since I arrived via regular email bulletins, and we have regular Zoom chats. Their expertise and experience has been invaluable as I've begun learning the collections and responding to enquiries. We're still playing it by ear, but they and I look forward to the day when I'm able to have volunteers back in the archives.
Much of what archivists do in normal times happens "behind the scenes" and doesn't involve visitors and researchers: answering remote enquiries, cleaning, condition surveys, environmental monitoring, accessioning, listing, packaging, arranging and describing, writing blog posts, working with teachers to create school outreach activities... I had a lot to do, starting right back in the summer of 2020 and intensifying at the end of the year and into early 2021, to prepare the collections and the Archives space for 6 months of storage/renovations - and I have a lot to do again now that I'm back in: catching up with enquiries that need checking within collections, moving and reboxing, appraisal and weeding, complete update of the locations register, writing policy and training documents, etc.
But what on earth does an archivist do without access to the archives?? This is a question many, if not most, archivists everywhere suddenly had to grapple with in the spring of 2020. I was able to work on site from when I started in May - never having visited the archives! - through the rest of 2020, but then had 6 months of working from home during the 2021 renovations. This is not an ideal situation, and it does bring some important limitations, but I did have the advantage of advance warning and time to prepare. And thanks to an initiative from the Society of American Archivists' Accessibility & Disability Section, archivists needing to work from home already had plenty of ideas and tools to use and develop further: read more at https://www.ica.org/en/archivists-at-home
