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Showing posts with the label archival theory

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