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Jun 19, 2014  |  Vote 0    0

You Asked What?

DurhamRegion.com

In this monthly feature, we take a look at some of the odd and often tough questions asked at Durham’s libraries, art galleries, museums and archives.

This month’s question and answer comes from Sarah Ferencz, archivist at Whitby Archives, located in Whitby Public Library.

Question: Is this the only archives in Canada? The researcher was calling from a small town in a northern American state.

Answer: No. There are many archives right here in Durham Region, across Ontario and throughout Canada. In Durham, there are archival collections in the libraries of Ajax, Clarington, Oshawa, Pickering, and Whitby and there are stand-alone archives in Uxbridge, Clarington, Oshawa and Scugog. In fact, in 2011 we joined to create the Durham Region Area Archives Group in order to work together to promote our shared heritage. We have since grown to include the Port Hope Archives, the Robert McLaughlin Gallery and the University of Ontario Institute of Technology. We hold events for Archives Awareness Week in April and host professional development workshops for our members to learn new skills and improve new ones. DRAAG also allows us to better assist researchers and genealogists since we have an understanding of the various mandates and collections of our member sites.

With our burgeoning group up and running, we decided to apply to become a chapter of the Archives Association of Ontario, a professional organization with more than 300 members. The AAO represents archives and archivists living and working in Ontario and institutional members include corporate, religious, indigenous, historical, municipal, association and community archives. Institutional members can be as big as the Archives of Ontario and as small as the Deseronto Archives; Ontario has a wide variety of archival collections where archivists are ready and able to assist researchers.

The Association of Canadian Archivists and the Canadian Council of Archives oversee the archival profession at the national level and are responsible for advocacy, outreach, governance and professional development. The ACA has a membership of 600 archivists and the CCA facilitates the 13 provincial and territorial associations in Canada.

So I was quite confident in my response to the researcher when I told her, no, in fact there are several hundred archives in Ontario alone.

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