Open Collections

Cooperative total archives for Kelowna, British Columbia

University of British Columbia

Major -factors in the underdevelopment of local archives in the municipality of Kelowna, British Columbia, have been a lack of public and administrative awareness of the value of archival institutions and archival documents, a lack of local political interest in the subject of archives, a lack of federal, provincial and local aid or legislation to facilitate local archival development, and thus, a lack of funding at the community level for archives. There has also been a need for direction from the provincial government in planning effective records management/archival systems for Kelowna, as well as for most other municipalities in British Columbia. To come to a decision on how to overcome these problems it has been necessary to study perspectives on local archives, to analyze the records management/archival relationship, and to be knowledgeable of problems facing local archives in British Columbia. An interdisciplinary approach has been taken, with literature and primary sources from the archival, museum, library, historical, political science and records management fields being studied. In the archives domain, two major studies, the Symons and the Wilson reports, with their emphasis on federal, provincial and local networking, formed an excellent basis for further investigation. Where they were available, statistics concerning local archives in British Columbia have proven most helpful, as have provincial government reports. The above have been supplemented by letters and questionnaires to provincial and territorial archives, as well as to local municipalities in British Columbia. Two conclusions have been reached. First, "total archives" that collect both official and unofficial documents in all media, and use systematic records management procedures have become a, Canadian public archives tradition which has the potential to prove a valuable example for smaller municipalities. Secondly, in order to achieve economies of scale, private and public agencies may have to cooperate in joint funding efforts at the local level. By combining public and private endeavours, a new type of archives is created. It is posited that this amalgam, a "cooperative total archives," could become the basis for archival development in the municipality of Kelowna, British Columbia.

Text

2010-06-14

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http://hdl.handle.net/2429/25709

Archival Studies

University of British Columbia

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