Dear colleagues...
In an earlier posting today from the AAO about a proposal to increase
membership fees, there was a reference to the recent survey that was done.
As someone who's been involved with Archeion since the beginning, I
would like to answer one comment made about Archeion. The respondent said:
+++++++
Archives Advisor services offer little of value to established archives
so a parttime
service seems appropriate. Increased access to the Preservation Advisor
would increase satisfaction. Not sure why we need a provincial descriptive
database -- could this be done directly at a national level?
++++++
The short answer is, no, descriptions cannot be done directly at the
national level.
The reason why we need a provincial descriptive database (i.e.,
Archeion) is because ArchivesCanada is built on a distributed network
model of capturing descriptions. Provinces provide the aggregation
service to collect descriptions in their jurisdictions to the best of
their capabilities and with the resources they have, and what their
provincial associations determined would be most useful to their
institutional members. The provincial aggregators are responsible for
uploading these to the national database, otherwise known as
ArchivesCanada.
ArchivesCanada was never designed to accept descriptions from individual
institutions. Nor should it be. Imagine the overhead that would be
required to manage accepting input from thousands of institutions, of
widely varying levels of expertise and technology, instead of 10
provinces, 3 territories, and select national institutions who have at
least some standardization in place and can submit their descriptions in
bulk.
It should also be noted that while ArchivesCanada is a creature of the
Canadian Council of Archives - also under tremendous threat thanks to
the cancellation of the NADP programme - the information technology
support for it was historically provided by Library & Archives Canada,
when the staff there were given the resources to provide support at
all. In fact, in most cases, provinces were way ahead of LAC in making
their "union list" of descriptions available, and if we had waited for
LAC we wouldn't be where we are now. ArchivesCanada has been a
collaborative effort from day 1, as most things in the overall Canadian
archival system have been until recently.
I also found this comment (and others like it) very interesting and
frustrating because Archeion is a service that is provided essentially
FREE OF CHARGE to all institutional members of the AAO. For their
miniscule membership investment, and the cost of an Internet connection,
AAO institutional members get a robust data capture interface; a search
engine; a server to host their descriptions (many AAO members have
little IT capability at all); a standards-based description using
current best practices; expert advice in the form of a paid, albeit
part-time, Archeion coordinator; a way to publicize their holdings to
the world at minimal cost. Most of Archeion was conceived, designed,
established, and kept alive by a small group of volunteers, yet the AAO
membership still begrudges paying a little more for some dedicated
continuity.
All AAO services are now at risk because the archival community does not
appear willing and/or able to pay for staff to do things. Volunteerism
is great but if we want ongoing, sustainable programs, we have to step
up with time and/or dollars.
Respectfully,
Suzanne
** These opinions are my own, and not my institution's. **
--
Suzanne Dubeau, MISt
Acting Head, Clara Thomas Archives & Special Collections
York University, 305 Scott Library, 4700 Keele Street
Toronto, ON M3J 1P3
Tel: 416.736.5442 Fax: 416.650.8039
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