Yesterday, I got a chance to visit the Burnaby LAC office as I worked with a couple of the archivists there while at NRCan. Unfortunately, I didn’t get any pictures, but the tour wasn’t the focus of my visit.
The office is made up of about 5 staff members on the archives side and a few more for the records management side of the facility. The warehouse is pretty big, but stores mostly inactive files still in the custody of the originating department, managed by the records side of the office.
Apparently, the big area of interest for researchers and the public are the Indian Affairs documents including residential schools records.
While the building and facilities are much less impressive than the Ottawa ones, it was really nice to see that everyone knew each other and considered the team their “little family”. I must admit that there are always pros and cons to working in any work place, but it seemed like a more inclusive environment.
As you would expect, the collections are focused on law enforcement, particularly the investigative component with only a minor amount of materials on criminology. Other than books and journals, they also have microfiche (most has been weeded though), audio/visual materials, theses, studies, and reports.
Services
Standard services of reference, ILL, specialized bibliographies, training are available. It’s not a very big library, but is specialized in supporting all police agencies and organizations across Canada (and some international) as well as the students attending the college. It’s a nice, quiet space with a reading and working area open 24/7! Reference and A/V are only available during regular hours naturally.
Sorry, no pictures this time. Camera ran out of batteries and out of spares! The website has a Virtual Library Tour though.
Stables Tour
As part of our tour of the library and campus, we got to go on the stables tour. Having seen the musical ride, it was interesting to learn about how things work behind the scenes. Sadly, they only tour Saskatchewan and east of it. The most interesting part was learning that they have 8 months to train (that includes learning how to ride if they have no experience!) and then get to stay for (usually) 2 years. No touching the horses unfortunately, but for anyone who has any interest in horses and/or the ride, I would encourage them to go. It’s a public and free tour.
This week’s tour was to the War Museum‘s Research centre. The research centre is an amalgamation of the library, archives, and photo archives. All of their collections are searchable online and you can get in-house access to them. Borrowing of library materials is also available through interlibrary loans.
Library
The library provides all the usual services including reference and ILL. There is always a staff member on the reference desk whether it be a staff who works on the library side of things or the archives.
The library collects materials relating to military, history, biographies, cartoons, technical manuals (e.g. carrier pigeons, bugle songs), newspapers, etc. with a focus on Canadian materials (many of which are self published), but also materials from/on countries that had a lot of interaction with Canada. Much of their collection (library and archives) is acquired through donations.
The space is nicely furnished with a reading room (which is for the viewing archives and rare books), Canadian war art, mix of regular and compact shelving, and a study area with a wonderful view of the river. Just outside the windows is a landscape model of a battlefield where a family of groundhogs live.
The Archives
The archives area is divided essentially into two areas. One is the work room and the other consist of three vaults (books, maps, photo). The work room is used for basic conservation tasks while anything extensive or complex is contracted out. The vault itself was the usual temperature controlled area with shelving for storing materials. The 3D maps shelving was interesting in that it included rubber pieces (each piece is kept in a bag in case the temperature control breaks and it starts to melt), and very large pieces (the shelf has extra large stoppers so that the pieces do not hit the wall since they are wider than the shelving).
The archives collects a lot of different old and current/contemporary materials including rare books (pre-1900 or significant/interesting one offs), letters, maps (smallest of which is approximately 4″x6″, largest of which is the NORAD map approximately 8’x10′), blueprints, records, scrapbooks, photos, and video/film. Generally, official records are collected by the national archives while the war museum collects more personal ones. As mentioned, most of the acquisitions are done through donations (some of which is from people cleaning out their attic), while a few are purchased.
Some interesting pieces that were shown to us (see pictures in slideshow) including silk WWI postcards, letter of mourning (with the king’s real signature), WWII war time logs, WWII terrain model (made of cotton on cardboard), colour uniform book, treatise on artillery (the oldest book from 1628), book on uniforms’ lace patterns, photos from the Afghanistan war, military man’s scrapbook including his medals of award.
Short Reflection
The tour was great since we got to see both the library and archives, particularly how they work together. The staff’s enthusiasm really showed and made it seem like a great place to work (which I am certain it is) beyond working with interesting material. The materials were also carefully chosen by staff (and volunteers), so it gave it a more “personal” touch. Finally, the tour was nicely timed on a Thursday afternoon so that we could enjoy the museum for free afterwards. This was definitely one tour not to be missed!
This week’s tour was to Industry Canada‘s Library and Knowledge Centre. The library at Industry Canada focuses on meeting the needs of their users through partnerships, providing easy access to content, and providing a space for collaboration and sharing of information.
Services
Much like any library, they provide:
reference services through e-mail, telephone, and in-person at the desk
in-depth reference services provided by portfolio (subject) librarians
online resources, such as subject and research guides
current awareness, such as weekly Radar (news), news in departmental newsletter, blog (events, resources, news)
access to print (via catalogue) books and serials (in-house and interlibrary loans), subscription databases, etc.
training and learning (which helps employees fulfill their personal learning plans), such as orientations for the library and research, viewing and participation of external webinars
Much of the development of their services is based on feedback and the needs of their users, focusing on the subjects you would expect at Industry Canada (business, economics, statistics, management, etc.) and information that is very current. For example, one area they focus on for new articles and resources are what they refer to as ThinkTanks, information coming out of organizations such as universities and research councils, since this is an area that people are generally unfamiliar with and perhaps where alert tools are not as readily available.
Library Space
The library has also just moved to a new physical space (last May). Library staff worked with a designer to improve on the old space based on staff comments and feedback. The focus with the new design was on creating an information commons, and more areas for people to use the space rather than having it taken up by shelving. As a result, the library has a mix of compact and regular shelving, but much less of it. An estimated 29% of the print material was weeded.
When you enter, you are immediately greeted with promotional materials on the side and the front desk always staffed by a librarian. It is amusingly dubbed the “hotel desk” as it was purposely designed with a different set of lights and lettered wallpaper to make it feel more approachable and welcoming.
The new space also has an additional training area so that more than one training session can be done at once, and a few study carrels were added based on user feedback. A nice reading area includes cushy chairs, magazines, journals, new books, and a couple of TVs on news channels.
Personally, the best part of the tour really was seeing the difference between the old space (which we got to see pictures of in a video) and the new one, and hearing about the considerations that were put into why and how design considerations were made.
At the 5th RK Day hosted by Library and Archives Canada (LAC), speakers from LAC and the consulting firm OSTA (On Second Thought Advisory) gave an overview of the methodology including some background, why it’s being done, and some of the benefits. I’ve provided here a brief summary and some thoughts.
Disclaimer: Please note that this is a personal explanation and may sometimes involve interpretation based on my own understanding and experiences. This is not an authoritative guide in any way. Links used here are not necessarily the most detailed or most authoritative links, but are used here because most documentation is internal to the Government of Canada. As always, opinions expressed are my own.
Recordkeeping Methodology
Trends and Shifts
LAC speakers spoke much on the shifts and trends happening in and outside the government that helped to push forward this initiative:
renewal and modernization of the office
culture change to convergence of policy, technology, etc.
rapid technology development
increasing difficulty in finding and accessing (definitive version of) information
reducing dependencies on paper
Policy
The initiative goes hand in hand with the policy that has been created. The Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat (TBS) put into effect the Directive on Recordkeeping a couple of years ago mandating that all government departments need to be compliant by 2014.
The methodology is also to help departments align themselves with various frameworks and structures, such as:
LAC is also taking a new approach to recordkeeping with this methodology. A few key differences:
New terminology: Information Resources (IR) to encompass everything instead of just records.
Focus on value: Business Value (BV) and Enduring Value (EV, what is more or less equivalent to archival value) instead of by format or medium.
Valuation is at time of creation not at the time of disposition or later.
Prioritization at a high level based on existing plans and structures of the department means that it is risk informed.
General valuation disposition tools (GVDT) that allow LAC to apply a disposition authority (RDA) to multiple institutions as a template with flexibility to ‘customize’ it for departments that need it. e.g. 60+ RDAs to 8? GVDTs to cover the same amount of IRs (don’t quote me on these numbers though).
The Methodology
The RK methodology focuses on using what the department already knows and has, and implementing everything based on existing knowledge, resources, and tools while filling in any gaps. So, if a department already has everything more or less in place, the project should take a relatively short time.
The methodology itself has 3 phases and 7 steps as shown in the diagram:
I’ll give a brief overview at a very high level just to give people an idea of what it’s all bout. There are a lot of documents, questionnaires, spreadsheets, etc. related to each stuff which they talked about at the presentation, but I won’t go through all of them here.
Phase 1 & Step 1: Planning
High level analysis is done at the department level to see where the department stands in terms of recordkeeping. There is an Initiation Survey, which is supposed to be a quick (approximately 15 yes/no type questions) assessment of the department’s current practices. A more in-depth Diagnostic Tool allows an analysis of the readiness and complexity of the project for the particular department as well as an initial evaluation of time and resources requirements. More questionnaires and reports build on these in looking at the current state of things, prioritization, building a project plan, and a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with LAC.
Phase 2 & Steps 2-5: One Time Effort Phase
If the diagram confuses you at this stage, it is essentially supposed to show that the steps are non-linear as things go back and forth and an organization can be in multiple steps at once. Allow me to explain.
Step 2 mentions engagement and of course, the department will begin the project, and with LAC’s assistance, focus on the highest priorities. Communications and presentations will be made to the department. Along with awareness and training throughout this process, obviously, documents to help staff on identifying information resources that have value and what to do will be created.
Once into Step 3 (Data Collection Exercise), more in-depth questionnaires are done at the sector level focusing on value, controls, risk, and capacity. Particularly for large organizations, those working on the project will have to engage each sector to collect information, and depending on how quickly one sector is completed at this step, they may move forward to the next before another sector.
Step 4 build reports and essentially an inventory of repositories, records, information resources, and what controls are in place to manage the information. Supporting documentation is also created with rationale on how to identify what information resources are of business and/or enduring value.
Step 5 puts it all together into one spreadsheet (Recordkeeping Accountability Instrument) listing program sub activities and outcomes, whether it has (or likely to have) business and/or enduring value, which disposition authority applies and how, and who holds responsibility among other things like security and risk (but I have listed the essentials to give the general ideas). This spreadsheet would become a reference document for all staff, particularly those involved with information management (in any way, not necessarily in the IM branch only).
Other documents are also created at this stage to identify any gaps and actions to address these gaps. Recordkeeping roles are also identified and committed to by the department. Plans are also created for the final phase.
Phase 3 & Steps 6-7: Ongoing
Finally, the department is to maintain the reference materials and follow through on the action plan. Results are reported, information is managed, change is monitored, and things are revised as needed.
The Benefits to the Department
I think benefits to the department should be fairly obvious, but here are a few:
(likely) support of clean up and disposition of legacy records
There are others, mostly surrounding information and records management, and some which are more related to the archival side, such as preventing lost of information with enduring value.
Benefits to Government
Other than the myriad benefits related to information management within a department and compliance by all government departments, I believe that applying this methodology to the government as a whole has some added benefits. For the most part, these benefits stem from collaboration:
reuse of documentation, tools, reports, etc. including training and awareness tools
development and refinement of the methodology such that the process should go faster for those implementing the project later
development of general disposition authorities (versus institution specific) means quicker roll out of authorities
Timeline
Certainly for anyone in the Canadian government who was not already aware of all this would be most interested in the expected timeline.
Summer 2011 – Preparation
Initiation surveys have been sent out with the diagnostic tool available this month. Selected departments will be contacted to be early adopters and begin the project. LAC will also be training their staff and certifying consultants.
Fall 2011 – Phase 1 for GC
LAC will be getting all departments through phase 1 by the end of the year with early adopters moving into phase 2.
Winter 2012 – GC Wide Implementation
Projects will begin in clusters of institutions (presumably similar ones will be grouped together). LAC hopes to finish by June 2014 in order for all departments to be compliant with the directive by the ‘due date’.
Sounds very ambitious, but it also sounds like they thought it through. One can only see if it works out, I hope it does!
Some Thoughts and Reflections
The Event
The event itself was well organized for the most part. There was definitely a good turn out. I think there’s room for improvement for the next time they do something similar though.
Considering the audience and that most people will not have been exposed to the methodology before, I thought the presentation went into a bit too much detail at times, overwhelming some. Talking about the tools at a high level is great, but showing people unfamiliar with the project an actual spreadsheet struck me as something that would simply confuse people.
The presentations were also done in both English and French. I understand the importance of having the presentations in both languages, but considering that most people are bilingual, hearing each slide done first in English and then in French is repetitive to most. If the presenters are worried about presenting in someone’s primary language, is it not common practice to simply have two presentations, one in English and one in French separately? On the upside, I got to learn some of the French vocabulary related to the project, which I had not been previously exposed to.
Some things were simply logistical in nature, but I think made a difference:
if you are going to advertise a twitter hashtag, make sure your presenter knows what it is (and advertise it before hand)
if you have a twitter hashtag, have it projected somewhere so people can see the conversation
either make people hold extra questions until later or allow more time for questions so as not to go overtime
have the event in the afternoon so that people west of Ontario can participate at a reasonable time (it was a morning half day)
Nevertheless, overall, I think the presentations were well organized, and the presentations on presenting the rationale for the project and the timeline were definitely well done, giving people a good sense of why the initiative is happening and how LAC will lead the departments into compliance.
Personal Value
Attending the session really helped me get an overview of the methodology and to put my work into context. Having entered the RK Project in the middle of the pilot made it so that I had to do a lot of catch up work, and unfortunately, I will not see the department complete phase 2 either. The overview gave me the big picture of the project as well as informed me on the status with the rest of the government, which was great. I also go to report back to our team with the information that the presentations were done in both languages, which I think will be of use to us.
