Ontario's Archives Relocated to a Safe Place

Ontario's provincial archive, which was deteriorating because of poor storage conditions downtown, is now safe in a state-of-the-art facility at York University. The long-awaited facility, which officially opened yesterday, is being leased by the province for $5.3 million a year and will house a $400 million treasure that dates back to 1729.

The new building is home to nearly 2 million photographs, 45,000 maps and 240,000 architectural plans – a collection so vast it would stretch 100 kilometres if laid end to end.

You can read more at http://www.archives.gov.on.ca and at http://www.gov.on.ca/mgs/en/News/108293.html.

Comments

[Ed Zapletal]

Although it is exciting to have a new home for the Archives of Ontario, the genealogy community is not so impressed. The hours of this important research resource have been scaled back making it more difficult for people to visit the facility. Previous to the move, the Archives were open daily and also from 5 p.m. to 10 p.m. Monday to Friday, and Saturday 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. The new hours are Monday to Friday 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. only. During the recent OGS 2009 Conference held in Oakville, Ontario in late May, a petition was circulated to express the concerns and disappointment with the changes. If you wish to state your opinion, emails are welcome. Send to Susan McIntosh at the Archives of Ontario. susan.mcintosh@ontario.ca

[Zadruga Guy]

Sorry, Ed, I won't be signing your petition. With the world's economy the way it is, I doubt that the taxpayers of Ontario would be willing to fund the archive at the level needed for it to do everything. Thus, the archive had to make hard decisions. Obviously, if having weekend and Saturday hours was a better use of those scarce funds than what they have instead been budgeted for, then those hours would not have been cut. What you should be circulating is a petion to the government of Ontario asking for greater funding for the archive.

The most important thing that any archive should focus on is having physical control of its holdings, which includes having its holdings stored in proper conditions. The move of the archive seems to have gone a long way towards that but I am sure that further work remains to be done.

The second most important thing for archives to focus on is to have intellectual control -- knowing what it has in sufficient detail for reader requests to be filled -- and for it to be able to detect when readers steal material. This is also known as accessioning.

Providing access to the holdings is only the third most important objective. I am sure that the archive has counted reader noses and knows what times of which days are its busiest, and thus chose to focus on providing service at those times. I agree that the new hours are not convenient for people who work a standard 9 to 5 day. Thus, I hope that the archive continues its efforts to provide access to its most used collections via digitization, so that at least preliminary steps can be taken from home, thus reducing the amount of time needed to be physically at the archive. And of course it does not need to be you physically at the archive. There are any number of professional genealogists who can do the research for you.

[Myrt :)]

DearGUY,
While the local state or provincial archives might not be where my ancestors lived, I am not upset paying taxes to modernize and keep the doors open.

I pray the folks in those places where my ancestors lived are doing the same thing to provide access to the archives when I need it.

[Bobbi]

Dear Zadruga Guy,

There is nothing wrong with people telling The archives that the hours are not advantageous to them. What is wrong with the idea of them opening the archives 3 or 4 hours later than normal so they can be kept open 3 or 4 hours later? Or having a half day during the week so that they can have a half day on Saturday?

It is great having the records safe and protected. Let's just not have it in a way that it keeps the public from using them.

Bobbi