From the academic archive to the public library : some thoughts

 So I've recently made the transition from archival assistant at the University of Saskatchewan Archives and Special Collections, to Special Collections Librarian at the Local History Room in the Saskatoon Public Library. The move has me re-thinking some of the relationships between archival and library materials. In the larger archive at the University, it was easier (though not always easy) to draw a line: this goes into our library special collections; that is archival. But in the more intimate and public-oriented space of the Local History Room, I am reminded that from the perspective of most researchers those distinctions mean very little. Information is information, and if it is the information you are looking for it doesn't really matter how it was organized or what format it takes.


From behind-the-scenes, these things do matter, of course, and the reason for that is access. Some materials are simply better dealt with one way and others another. If every page in an archival file, or even every file in an archival fonds were to be cataloged according to library standards, the collection as a whole would lose meaning. It would become a series of unconnected discrete items. The archival fonds is more akin to a book itself than it is to a special collection of books -- cataloging each file separately without intricate means of linking everything back to its original order is analogous to tearing out the pages of that book and scattering them. The reverse is also true. Writing archival-like finding aids to manage library materials would (depending on what level you wanted to do it at) either produce a document so large it was unreadable, or so small that one might as well have written a catalog record. Books and other library resources require singular treatment in their management to remain accessible; archival fonds require wholeness.

But that is all behind-the-scenes stuff and to the researcher it doesn't and shouldn't matter. And really, if our work as archivists is to maintain access to the historical record, we are doing an injustice if we disregard "library" materials. Take this 1876 book The Prairie Province by J. C. Hamilton, found in the hutch of the reading room's unique secretary desk (pictured below).  Subtitled "Sketches of Travel from Lake Ontario to Lake Winnipeg, and an Account of the Geographical Position, Climate, Civil Institutions, Inhabitants, Productions and Resources of the Red River Valley; with Map of Manitoba and Part of the North-West Territory and District of Kewatin, Plan of Winnipeg, and of the Dawson Route, view of Fort Garry, and Other Illustrations," it is immediately apparent that this book has a lot to offer regarding the time period in which it is written. A critical reader will uncover even more about the socio-cultural, political, and economic environment of the Canadian prairies in 1876 -- or the ways in which the prairies were intended to be presented to the general public at this time. The book has other tidbits to offer -- seeing the old pouch from its time as a book in circulation is always charming (more charming if the card were left in), and what particularly caught my eye was the page of advertisements at the back of the book  encouraging emigration to Manitoba (another reason to give the book itself a bit of a critical read). 

So this is me, exploring the public library side of the world. More to come in future!
~Stevie Horn