“Fast Times at Library and Archives Canada. Imagine Sisyphus Happy!”

The 2018 Dalhousie-Horrocks National Leadership Lecture and Award Presentation was held on February 27th in honour of Dr. Norman Horrocks and featured a lecture by Dr. Guy Berthiaume, the Librarian and Archivist of Canada. View a recording of the lecture here.

Dr. Berthiaume’s talk highlighted the number of exciting projects Library and Archives Canada (LAC) are currently working on, as well as many hopes and plans for the future. The 140 projects that are presently underway include Project Naming, which won a 2017 Innovation Award at the eighth Francophone libraries’ Livres Hebdo Grand Prize in Paris, France. Project Naming’s intent is to digitize and identify over 10,000 photographs taken in Nunavut. Since 2001, they have identified over 25,000 people and places and have expanded all over Canada. Furthermore, LAC has taken the lead in the National Heritage Digitization Strategy, an effort to make all digitized Canadian materials accessible through a single search instrument.

Additionally, Dr. Berthiaume is extremely passionate about the public programming LAC has to offer. Under his leadership, LAC has revived the public offerings tenfold, because, as he puts it, “preservation without access is just hoarding.” From 2016-2017, LAC held over 400 public events and have reopened many partnerships with museums to hold conjoined exhibits. Some of these include, “Hiding in Plain Sight” and “Moments from a 150 Years Ago”. Upcoming exhibits will held at Glenbow Museum in Calgary, and later in Vancouver and Halifax.

Becky Shaw (a joint Master of Library and Information Studies & Master of Arts in Musicology student here at Dalhousie), was presented with the Dalhousie-Horrocks National Leadership Fund, by Sarah Horrocks (Norman Horrocks’ daughter). Sarah spoke on behalf of her family about her parents’ legacy, and told some wonderful stories about growing up with them.

SIM thanks the Horrocks family for their continued support of SIM and its students. We encourage anyone interested in supporting future IM leaders to donate to the Horrocks Fund today.