Last night, over 100 people crowded into the City of Ottawa Archives for a public meeting about the state of archives in Canada today: What We Have Lost, What We Stand to Lose: The Future of Archives and Archivists in Canada.  The gathering was organized by the Eastern Ontario Archive Association in response to recent decisions by the Federal government to reduce the size, scope and workforce at Library and Archives Canada (LAC).  Last year’s cuts included 20% of LAC staff being laid-off and cancellation of the highly popular National Archival Development Program (NADP). The NADP was a key source of funding (and often the only source of funding) for many of the over 800 small, regional archives across Canada. Keynote speakers included Patti Harper, head of Archive and Research Collections at Carleton University; James Turk, executive director of the Canadian Association of University Teachers; and Laurie Dougherty, archivist of the Arnprior Mcab / Braeside Archives.

The mood of the meeting was a feisty call to action …

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About 40 people gathered in Toronto last night to discuss what many hope will grow into a movement for archiving grassroots histories. The public meeting was organized by Ulli Diemer of the Connexions Archive as a way to bring like-minded activists and scholars together to find strategies for preserving the heritage of social movements and marginalized communities in Toronto and across Canada. (Check out #Connexions for the twitter feed from the event.)

The meeting was held at the Beit Zatoun House, a community centre that promotes arts and culture exploring issues of social justice and human rights. There was an exhibition of materials from the Connexions Archive in the gallery space where the meeting was held, a collection of magazine covers from grassroots publications dating back to the early 1970s. Connexions describes their archive (gathered over a period of more than 40 years) as a “living archive” which emphasizes the importance of encouraging public access and interaction with their archived materials.

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The Canadian Women’s Movement Archives are located at University of Ottawa library.  The collection consists of post-1960 materials and emphasizes grass-roots, activist and civil society organizations and individuals “working for the improvement of the political, social and economical condition of Canadian women”.   The collection focuses on non-profit groups and political events, and contains a wide range of archival records and publications such as: minutes of meetings, correspondence, reports, briefs, newsletters, posters, photographs, etc.

Finding aids for the Canadian Women’s Movement Archive are available online and offer thematic guides that index the approximately 2,000 women’s groups and events that make up the collection.

The Vanderbilt Television News Archive is one of the largest collections of television news in the world.  The archive has copies of newscasts from the major American broadcasters — ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN and Fox News — starting from Aug. 5, 1968 and continues to gather material daily. The archive is searchable online, parts of the archive are available through online streaming either by subscription or by special request, and DVD copies of material can be purchased. The Archive is housed in the Vanderbilt University Library in Nashville, TN.

The database holds 1015984 records, including abstracts at the story level for news programs and catalog records for special news programs.

Institutional subscriptions to the archive are available and allow online access to streaming video of thousands of hours of NBC and CNN news broadcasts. Subscribers also have access to over 950,000 news abstracts and catalog records.

For a bibliography of articles and studies about the Vanderbilt Television Archive go here.