Stored but inaccessible
Canada’s archives are not concealed, but they are not safe either.
Blacklock’s Reporter, the famously ornery publication dedicated to holding Ottawa to account, recently ran a story with the headline “860M Documents Concealed”.
Nearly 900 million pages of historic records, the vast majority of the collection held by Library and Archives Canada, are inaccessible to the public, says an internal briefing note. Archivists blamed in part the fact that “boxes must be physically retrieved from storage.”
I came across this story when another outlet, Juno News, linked its story on Blacklock’s reporting on Twitter, adding a quote that “Seventy-eight percent of records, 860 million pages, are still inaccessible”.
Given that the outlet’s tagline is “Canada’s #1 independent news outlet on a mission to replace the CBC”, it’s pretty clear what their angle on the story is. However, I was fortunate enough to scroll down in the comments and find a genuinely helpful link someone had shared to a Region of Peel Archives blog post.
The piece, “Why don’t archivists digitize everything?”, goes through some of the challenges of digitizing content in physical archives. Beyond the sheer volume of material, its fragility, and its sometimes awkward dimensions, there is also the question of assembling and conveying enough context such that the record is actually meaningful to those viewing it.
In looking into this story, I also found this Blacklock’s Reporter story from a few years ago: “Fed Archives At Serious Risk”.
Hundreds of thousands of records are at “serious risk” at Library and Archives Canada after managers stored material on obsolete tape cartridges, says an in-house report. “Some of the material is on media so old Library and Archives Canada does not have the hardware to open it,” wrote auditors.
As an archive enjoyer and amateur archivist myself, I appreciate the challenges of digitizing records that are measured in tonnes and kilometres. However, the “concealment of records” framing aside, I do think there is a legitimate complaint here when the vast majority of records remain inaccessible with no real plan to change this. Can it really be said that we are preserving our nation’s history if each day brings us closer to losing pieces of it to decay, fire, bit rot, obsolescence, or any of the other myriad threats to the long-term preservation of archival records?