ArchivesCanada: Public communications
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This page captures some of the public communications associated with the ArchivesCanada upgrade project, including user forum posts, announcements, project updates, broadcast emails, and other relevant public communications associated with the upgrade of ArchivesCanada to AtoM. For further context and history, see the ArchivesCanada project timeline page, and the background on the project landing page.
December 16, 2011 - CCA update
The following was posted in the Arcan-L Canadian archival mailing list by Louise Charlebois, as part of the CCA's regular update newletters (No. 70 - December 2011, ISSN 1710-8330), reposted on Arcan-L for broad distribution. The post included a section on plans for ArchivesCanada, copied below:
1. Holiday message from the Chair of the CCA Board of Directors
Season's Greetings!
2011 has been a good year for CCA, as we saw the continuation of the National Archival Development Program, as well as funding for Young Canada Works in Heritage Institutions, work on the National Needs Assessment of Archives, productive meetings with Board and Committee representatives, and our first (!) web and phone-based General Assembly. I would personally like to thank the CCA Board, committee members and other volunteers for their tremendous work on behalf of the community, and to the secretariat for their support to all.
We have an exciting year ahead of us! Among the priorities for 2012, we will be dedicating significant effort and resources towards the launch of our new website and the implementation of the ICA-AtoM software for the national catalogue of archival descriptions, ARCHIVESCANADA.ca. The more robust and scalable hosting infrastructure will be rolled-out in Spring 2012 and will also include a mobile-friendly search interface. Our sincere thanks to Library and Archives Canada and the Council of Provincial and Territorial Archivists for their generous financial contributions towards this important project.
From the smallest volunteer-run archives, to our largest institutions, Canadian archives are deeply committed to preserving our documentary heritage and we frequently go "above and beyond" to assist our users and communities. This spirit of collegiality and dedication is the backbone of the Canadian archival system; it is my hope that this holiday season will provide you with time away from your regular day-to-day work schedule and that you are able to enjoy a well deserved break with fun and celebration with your loved ones.
On behalf of the CCA Board and Secretariat, warmest wishes to our members and partners for the holidays and 2012!
Sincerely,
Lara Wilson, CCA Chair
April 13, 2012 - CCA update
The following was posted in the Arcan-L Canadian archival mailing list by Louise Charlebois, as part of the CCA's regular update newletters (No. 72 - March/April 2012, ISSN 1710-8330), reposted on Arcan-L for broad distribution. The post included a section on plans for ArchivesCanada, copied below:
1. Message from the CCA Board of Directors
ARCHIVESCANADA.ca is the national gateway to archival resources found in over 800 repositories across Canada.
We are pleased to announce that on September 28, 2012 an upgraded ARCHIVESCANADA.CA site will be launched using the 2.0 release of the open-source ICA-AtoM software (http://ica-atom.org) ICA-AtoM software development is led by Vancouver-based Artefactual Systems (http://artefactual.com) on behalf of a growing community of international implementers. This includes the provincial association portals of British Columbia, Ontario, Saskatchewan and Manitoba.
As announced last summer, CCA contracted Artefactual Systems to develop an enterprise search index plugin for ICA-AtoM 2.0, a mobile-friendly search interface, as well as a new 'Dominion' theme to help relaunch the new ARCHIVESCANADA.ca site.
There are no license fees to install and customize the AGPLv3 licensed software and these enhancements will become freely available to all ICA-AtoM users in the 2.0 release.
To date, Artefactual has completed a detailed usability analysis of the ARCHIVESCANADA.ca site which resulted in a revamped ARCHIVESCANADA.ca homepage, the Dominion theme application templates and mobile interface. These have been integrated with the new enterprise search index. Ongoing work includes data migration from the current system and upgrades to the administrator import interface to improve ongoing transfers of descriptions from provincial contributors.
An update on this work and sneak peak of the new ARCHIVESCANADA.ca site will be provided during the ICA-AtoM session at the ACA conference in Whitehorse.
June 15, 2012 - CCA update following the elimination of the NADP
The National Archival Development Program (NADP), a $1.7 million dollar contribution program administered by the CCA on behalf of Library and Archives and distributed to Canada's 13 provincial and territorial councils to support local archival development projects, was eliminated in April of 2012. As part of a response to this unexpected development explaining its impact on current CCA projects, Lara Wilson, CCA Chair, posted a message to the Arcan-L Canadian archival mailing list, which included the following about the ArchivesCanada project:
ARCHIVESCANADA.ca: re-deployment of ARCHIVESCANADA.ca using ICA AtoM will launch as expected in September 2012. LAC will no longer be involved as a host for the national catalogue and contributors' databases.