The Past on Tap

Amanda HillHillbraith Ltd.

Archives Association of OntarioDeseronto Archives

“Division of Classification and Cataloging, November 17, 1937.”U.S. National Archives’ Local Identifier: 64-NA-193

http://www.flickr.com/photos/usnationalarchives/3874691342/

"…professional archivists need to transform themselves from elite experts behind institutional walls to becoming mentors, facilitators, coaches,

who work in the community"Terry Cook, 'Evidence, memory, identity, and community: four shifting archival

paradigms' Archival Science, June 2013

archivalactivism.wordpress.com

Support community recordkeepers

"Archivists can also engage interested members of the community in interactive dialogues with

mainstream archives and their holdings.“Terry Cook, 'Evidence, memory, identity, and community: four shifting archival

paradigms' Archival Science, June 2013

Community involvement

• Go where there are people

School projects

Try not to say ‘no’

Land that supports our feet Symposium: Blanket exercise

http://www.kairoscanada.org/dignity-rights/indigenous-rights/blanket-exercise/

Blanket exercise

http://www.kairoscanada.org/dignity-rights/indigenous-rights/blanket-exercise/

(Over)share obsessively

• Get out-of-copyright images online with permissive licences

– Let the public do your work for you, online and off

– People love to share your content

Go where people are online, too

• Blog, Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr– Go where people are - online as well as off

• Make collections and activities as open as possible

Provides evidence of usefulness

Mobilizes support in times of trouble

• Response to NADP cuts on Facebook in 2012

Tell stories!

“…if we are not helping people understand the world they live in, and if this is not what

archives is all about, then I do not know what it is we are doing that is all that important.”

F. Gerald Ham, 1975‘The Archival Edge', American Archivist, January 1975, p.13

“…that backwater, which, though apparently calm and comfortable, may also be stagnant with the signs of approaching irrelevance.”

Hugh Taylor, 1993

http://www.flickr.com/photos/deserontoarchives/3699611148/