The AAO is a network of archives and archivists providing programs, education, advocacy and shared knowledge to approximately 309. AAO offers Archeion, a publicly accessible and Google-search optimized provincial database of archival descriptions. Archeion descriptions are also fed into ArchivesCanada, the national database of archival descriptions; Archeion offers AAO member institutions a free platform on which to upload archival descriptions, and possibilities for understanding how users discover content online; AAO undertook 2012 survey asking about challenges facing archives, troubles included cuts to NADP and reliance on short-term grants when archives require stability, poor labor conditions and increasing precarity, lack of public awareness. For archives there is no 'paperless future'. Two challenges for digital records: 1) The understandable demand from researchers to make analogue materials available digitally and online; 2) The largely unresolved question of how to select, capture, and preserve born-digital records.
