Dear Members

It has been a busy year for the AMA with two significant advocacy campaigns underway.  Since the beginning of my term in 2016, the Board has been discussing the current structure of the AMA, our mandate, and our services.  We have long known that the changes brought on by the closure of the NADP funding programming and the loss of our Archival Advisor was having a significant impact on our ability to deliver services to our community.  In the hope that we can evolve to meet changing needs along with changing resources, we have embarked upon a strategic planning project.  We anticipate this will be a multi-phased project over two years.  The first step was to engage the services of a consultant to facilitate this process.  We have started work with Margerit Roger of Eupraxia Training, beginning with introspective discussions as a Board on our challenges and opportunities. 

Realizing that our limited resources and entirely volunteer-driven association necessitates clear focus, we are rolling out a short member survey to help us determine our direction over the next 3-5 years.  Completing this survey should take no more than 5 to 10 minutes of your time you can find the link to the survey below.  We will  be gathering the results of this survey over the fall and hope to conduct some interviews with individual members, and former members over the winter months.  Once the results have been compiled and analyzed we will move forward with the development of our strategic plan. We very much look forward to sharing the results with our members.

 

We do very much hope that you will take the time to participate in this survey as  it is crucial in assisting us moving forward.  Your thoughts and opinions are important to us as - our members are who the AMA exists for.  

 

 Watch for the announcement of our upcoming AGM shortly.  We hope to see you there.  Thank you again for taking the time to assist us in this important project. 

Here is the link to our short survey.  

https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/AMASurvey2018  

Thank you for all of your support. 

With respect,

Heather Bidzinski

Chair, Association for Manitoba Archives

Applications for National Heritage Digitization Strategy funding are closing soon.  If you have a digitization project ready to go, but no funds to do so, check out the information on the NHDS website!

National Heritage Digitization Strategy

Nominations for the 2018 Manitoba Day Awards are now open! The nomination form and more information about the awards can be found here. Nominations should be submitted by April 15, 2018.

The office of the AMA has moved to 606-100 Arthur Street, in the Artspace building. Office hours are now Thursdays from 9-4:30.

The National Archival Accession Standard Working Group would like to invite members of the archival community to participate in the development of the Canadian Archival Accession Information Standard (CAAIS). They may do this by reviewing the draft standard and responding to the CAAIS survey available at this link. More information can be found on the ArchivesCanada website here.

On November 8th, the future of the University of Manitoba Joint Archival Studies and History Program will be determined. This is occurring with no opportunity for response to the proposal to be discussed on the 8th from current archival students or graduates of the program, and none from the wider archival community that benefits from the program and its well-educated graduates. There is a lot at stake. We require your immediate attention and support. Please take a minute to read our call to action.

We've noticed a large number of spam comments on blog entries on the AMA website. Commenting has temporarily been disabled while members of the Technology Working Group delete the spam comments and try to find a better spam filtering solution. Apologies for the inconvenience.

The Archives Association of Ontario (AAO) and the Association of Manitoba Archives (AMA) are pleased to announce a joint conference to be held 11-13 May 2016 in Thunder Bay, Ontario. The AAO conference held in Thunder Bay in 2011 was the biggest ever gathering of archivists in Thunder Bay’s history. Archivists from Manitoba helped establish that record. The partnering of the two associations will make the 2016 super-conference even more successful.

The Call for Papers for the joint 2016 AAO/AMA Conference has been extended to October 30th.


The Conference Program Committee invites proposals pertaining to all areas of archival theory and practice that address issues seen as taboo within our community. Examples of these issues may include topics that are often overlooked, are not addressed in an inclusive manner or that create discomfort or discord in the relationships between practitioners, record creators, donors, users of archives, and the general public. Topics include, but are not limited to:

• Truth and Reconciliation.
• Professional failures and how we learn from them.
• How do we care for and represent records of trauma?
• What are we not effectively addressing as a profession?
• Representation of people/groups in archives and archival exhibits.
• How do we build or repair relationships with groups in the communities that we serve and foster trust in our institutions?
• What happens when we morally disagree with the appraisal and description of material held within our collections?
• How do we effectively acknowledge language, social custom, race, or gender barriers within both our collections and professional community?

Submissions of proposals for entire sessions or for individual papers are invited. The proposals should be sent with a brief abstract of 250 words and a bio to the AAO Office at aao@aao-archivists.ca.

The deadline to submit proposals is October 30, 2015.

We are happy to announce that the 2016 AAO/AMA Joint Conference will include a Student Papers and Posters session. A call for submissions will be issued later this year.

Posted on behalf of the AAO/AMA 2016 Conference Program Committee.

Many of you will have heard by now that the Royal Winnipeg Ballet Archives was flooded during the weekend of August 22nd. The archives are stored on the second floor of the RWB's building on Edmonton Street. The storage room was flooded when a toilet tank on the third floor exploded shortly after the building was closed for the weekend on Saturday. Water poured out and caused extensive damage to a large portion of the second floor as well as the parkade .

As soon as the disaster was discovered, the insurance company dispatched Winnipeg Furniture Services (WFS). Decisions were made quickly to have the records transported to WFS's facility for drying. What could not fit immediately into the drying room was frozen until they could be dried.  Archives staff had the opportunity to tour WFS's facility and see firsthand how their drying process works. We were pleasantly surprised to see that the records came out of drying quite well.

The majority of damaged records were housed in acid free file folders and Hollinger cases. Garry Brenner of WFS was impressed by how well our records came out of the drying process and he credited the excellent storage containers for that. Our photograph and slide collections were housed in PrintFile Print Preservers inside of acid free file folders and Hollinger cases. These also fared well through the flood.

Sometimes we find basic preservation work on our collections tedious and the supplies expensive. But an incident like this certainly shows that refoldering and reboxing are important. We were also grateful for having diligently removed all metal fasteners, so none of our documents got stained by rust.

WFS will be bringing in a paper conservator to help guide the work moving forward. We still have a lot of work ahead of us, but thankfully the records have been saved. We would like to thank everyone who offered their assistance to help through this calamity. Please be assured that the records are in good hands and every effort will be made to restore them.

Carole Boily

RWB Archivist

4 September 2015

Library and Archives Canada-Bibliothèque et Archives Canada has announced new funding for Canadian archives. The Documentary Heritage Communities Program (DHCP) provides financial assistance to heritage institutions, organizations, and communities that meet the objectives of the program. Please visit the DHCP website for specifics. 

Documentary Heritage Communities Program

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