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“Archives and Privacy within a Culture of Access”: Talk by Archivist Michael Moir

On Tuesday November 17, 2015, respected archivist Michael Moir will present a talk “Archives and Privacy within a Culture of Access”:

Date: Tuesday, November 17, 2015

Time: 5:30 p.m.

Location: Dalhousie University Archives and Special Collections Reading Room, 5th floor Killam Library.

Archivists, librarians, and curators face increasing pressure to preserve and share the documentary legacy of a generation of Baby Boomers facing retirement, domestic downsizing, and the end of their days. Archives become the means to commemorate their contributions to society, including events that can be quite recent. Such material often contains personal information about third parties who have no awareness that it has entered the public sphere. Those tasked with managing such collections must find a delicate balance between the need for access to pursue knowledge (an activity that lies at the heart of the reasons we preserve archival records), and the ethical concern for the privacy of third parties.

The situation has become more complicated by European court rulings involving Google and the right to be forgotten, and the legal battle over access to interview recordings from the “Belfast Project” that were deposited at Boston College.

This presentation will discuss how a project funded by the Canadian Association of Research Libraries reviewed news media, blogs, scholarly journals and government websites to track changing attitudes toward privacy and recorded information, and how these perspectives can influence practical aspects of stewarding archival holdings in terms of acquisition, description, reference, and outreach through digital initiatives.

Michael Moir is the University Archivist and Head of the Clara Thomas Archives and Special Collections of York University Libraries. He was the Director of Corporate Records Systems and City Archivist for the newly amalgamated City of Toronto from 1998 to 2004, and has served as an adjunct instructor and guest lecturer at the University of Toronto’s iSchool. His research interests vary from the management of unique research collections, to Canadian shipbuilding during the Great War.

This talk has been organized by the Council of Nova Scotia Archives. All are welcome!

International Ocean Institute visits the University Archives

Nikolaus Gelpke, Michael Moosberger, and Michael Butler at the Elisabeth Mann Borgese exhibit on the 5th Floor of the Killam Memorial Library

Nikolaus Gelpke, Michael Moosberger (University Archivist), and Michael Butler at the Elisabeth Mann Borgese exhibit on the 5th Floor of the Killam Memorial Library

On Monday, the University Archives were pleased to host members of the International Ocean Institute.  Nikolaus Gelpke was visiting Halifax to deliver the 2013 Elisabeth Mann Borgese Lecture. Borgese led a distinguished career as an oceans advocate and researcher who also worked on nuclear disarmament, international development, and many other issues that interested her.  She was instrumental in the adoption of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea and is known as the “Ambassador of the Seas.”

The University Archives holds the archives of Elisabeth Mann Borgese (MS-2-744), which was processed with the generous financial assistance of Gelpke.  The collection is now a major piece of the Archives’ growing collection of primary source material on sustainability, oceans research, and environmental science.

To celebrate the visit, the Archives prepared a small exhibit of materials from the Borgese collection that highlights areas where Borgese collaborated with Gelpke. The exhibit is available for viewing in the elevator lobby of the 5th Floor of the Killam Library.

If you missed Gelpke’s lecture, you can still learn about current issues in oceans management at the Halifax Oceans Film Festival, which starts tonight.  The Last Ocean, a new film about the Ross Sea in Antarctica, is being screened tonight at 7:00 p.m. at the Bayers Lake Empire Theatres.  There will also be a discussion led by Dr. Tony Walker.  There are additional screenings on June 19th and 26th.

Come check out the exhibit and enjoy the shows!

Upcoming Talk: Shaped By The Sea – The Life and Times of Archibald MacMechan

The Archives and Special Collections is excited to share news of an upcoming talk at the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic.

Portrait of Archibald MacMechan from the Archibald MacMechan fonds (MS-2-82)

On December 13 at 7:30 p.m., Elizabeth Peirce will give a talk titled Shaped by the Sea: The Life and Times of Archibald MacMechan.  Peirce is the editor of  In the Great Days of Sail, a new collection of reprinted MacMechan stories.  She will speak about MacMechan’s life, times, and contribution to Nova Scotia’s cultural history.

We’re excited about the talk because Archibald MacMechan’s papers are right here at Dalhousie (we just blogged about his report on the Halifax Explosion).  MacMechan’s papers are one of our most interesting collections.  It contains manuscripts of his published and unpublished works, photographs, correspondence, and other materials documenting his life and career as an educator, historian, and author.  MacMechan is a key figure in Nova Scotia’s cultural history.  From the Maritime Museum’s website:

Archibald MacMechan (1862-1933) was a well-known Nova Scotian writer, academic, and chronicler of his adopted province’s seafaring past. He taught in the English department of Dalhousie university for many years and counted among his students Lucy Maud Montgomery and Hugh MacLennan. Though well-respected as a scholar–he was among the first to teach a course in Canadian literature and to publish a critical survey of that literature, Headwaters of Canadian Literature, in 1924– MacMechan’s best-remembered work was contained in three collections of stories from Nova Scotia’s golden age of sail: Sagas of the Sea (1923), Old Province Tales (1924), and There Go the Ships (1928). These collections reveal MacMechan’s careful documenting of life at sea in the nineteenth century through many years of correspondence and visits with those who experienced it firsthand; many of his accounts of sea calamities and sheer human endurance through mutinies, storms, fires, and shipwrecks read more like thrilling fiction than bare fact.

Like Helen Creighton after him, Archibald MacMechan acted with incredible foresight to salvage an important part of Nova Scotia’s past from oblivion.

All talks at the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic take place in the Small Crafts Gallery at 7:30 p.m.  We hope you drop in to learn about MacMechan’s many contribution’s to Nova Scotia’s history.  If you can’t make it, his papers are here at the Archives and Special Collections on the 5th floor of the Killam Library.

Information Management Public Lecture

From Just-in-Case to Just-in-Time: The Changing Models for Information Resources Management and Development

Joyline Makani, Management and Economics Librarian, Dalhousie University

Thursday, March 3rd, 2011
2:00-3:00pm
Rowe Building Room 3089




In today’s economy, faced with increased pressure to reduce costs, information resources vendors and publishers are more receptive to the idea that just-in-time (JIT) business and service models could be beneficial to their bottom-line. JIT is a management philosophy that focuses on the production and inventory system ensuring that supplies arrive just as they are needed. JIT enables companies to save money and time because they don’t have to pay for storage space or manage as much inventory. Consequently the mounting pressure on vendors’ margins and the increasing adoption of JIT concepts as ways to reduce costs has resulted in new selection and acquisition models being pushed into the information manager’s work processes, specifically collection management and development processes. These models are enshrined in new concepts such as “patron driven acquisition” (PDA), or “print-on-demand services”.

For librarians/information managers the question remains, is JIT the right prescription to the effective building and maintaining of library collections, i.e., does JIT enable lean and efficient collection development processes? This paper explores the theory behind collection management and development in general, relating this to the changes and underlying attitudes in the currently evolving business models, specifically the role of the customer/patron versus that of the collection development librarian in academic libraries. The recently launched patron-driven e-book acquisitions pilot at the Dalhousie University Killam Library is also discussed as a case study informing this paper.

Joyline Makani has worked as the management and economics librarian at Dalhousie University for over ten years. As a subject specialist her primary areas of responsibility with regards to collection management and development include business, commerce, economics, information management, and public administration. She also teaches graduate and undergraduate courses in the Faculty of Management. She holds MLIS and MBA degrees from Dalhousie University and is currently a PhD candidate in knowledge management.