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ASA Conference 2003
Michael Gourlie, ASA Executive Director
After a hiatus of many years, the ASA held a conference from May 28-30 in association with its 2003 annual general meeting. Attended by a small but enthusiastic group, the conference addressed a variety of issues facing Alberta's archival community.
A workshop, "Digitization of Photographic Holdings: A Case Study," opened the conference, with Ann Carroll and Sue Bigelow presenting their experiences with digitization at the City of Vancouver Archives. The workshop provided an overview of the planning and resources necessary to undertake a digitization project within an institution, as well as the technical requirements.
The following day, keynote speaker Linda Goyette, former Edmonton Journal reporter now working on the "Edmonton: A Place Called Home" initiative, discussed her work to document the life and times of Edmonton, one of several projects that will celebrate the city's centenary in 2004. Her research activities, combined with a close working relationship with the city archives, provided an example of an outreach model for a community archives.
After the keynote session, the conference broke into a series of concurrent sessions. Janet McMaster discussed the growth, evolution and future of the ANA/CAIN initiative, while Wayne MacDonald and Mary Marshall provided an overview of trends in federal and provincial privacy legislation. Representing allied sectors of the heritage community, Marianne Fedori, David Dusome and David Murray presented the perspectives of those working with history, museums, and built heritage. Philip Pype, Marlena Wyman, Alison Freake, Kim Christie-Milley and Susan Stanton discussed interesting preservation projects and issues of the past year, including disaster recovery, reformatting unusual media, the new conservation lab at the Provincial Archives of Alberta, and storage improvement projects. Mary Nutting, Alexander Makar, Dan Kauffman and Debby Shoctor presented the perspectives and projects of recent ASA institutional members, showing the dynamism and growth within our community.
The majority of the conference's second and final day was set aside for the Institutional Forum and the Annual General Meeting, but two final sessions closed out the conference portion of the event. Don Bourdon, Raymond Frogner, Garth Clarke and Tracey Leavitt presented their institution's experiences with digitization projects, and Judy Kovacs discussed how to manage electronic records, particularly emails, more effectively.
This year's conference proved to be a satisfying experience for all participants, who enjoyed the opportunity to network with their colleagues and hear about the variety of projects and issues that represent the achievements and concerns of the province's archival community.
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