Submission to the Royal Society of Canada Expert Panel on the Future of Libraries and
Archives
Reflections on the National Acquisition Strategy
In considering the future of archives in Canada, and, more specifically, a Canadian archival
system, it may be useful to reflect on the experience of the 1988 attempt by the Canadian
Council of Archives (CCA) to establish a National Acquisition Strategy. I believe there are
systemic forces affecting Canada’s archival development, which must be recognized in any
collective effort to preserve our documentary heritage; these forces were at play in 1988 and
remain central to archival work today.

The dream of many Canadian archivists has been to develop a national archival system that
would strive to make the documentary heritage of Canada a meaningful part of contemporary
society. After much lobbying for federal government support, the Canadian archival community
seemed to realize this dream with the creation of the CCA in 1985. The mandate of the CCA was
"preserve and provide access to the Canadian documentary heritage by improving the
administration, effectiveness and efficiency of the archival system". To execute this mandate the
CCA was structured to include representatives of provincial and territorial archives councils
(from which the executive board was selected) which, in turn, were (and still are) composed of
representatives from individual institutions within each jurisdiction. Therefore, contrary to the
structure of the Association of Canadian Archivists (ACA) and the Association des archivistes
du Quebec (AAQ) both of which represent archival professionals, the CCA was (and remains
today) institutionally based.
One of the priorities of the CCA was the development of a national acquisition strategy to ensure
that, as much as possible, a full record of the development of Canada was acquired, preserved,
and made accessible. In 1988 the CCA struck a committee to develop such a strategy. Over the
next few years a nation-wide survey was completed to assess the acquisition practises of member
institutions. Among others, the committee produced a publication entitled Building a National
Acquisition Strategy, which suggested that the success of a national acquisition strategy would be
based in large part on the development of acquisition networks across the country. At a CCA
priorities and planning meeting in 1994, however, the general consensus was that the
development of any kind of national acquisition strategy was not a priority. As a result the CCA
Executive abolished the committee in 1995.
As Chair of the CCA committee originally tasked with creating the national acquisition strategy,
I have spent time reflecting on why that initiative was not successful. I articulated my thoughts
on the demise of the strategy in an article I wrote for the ACA Newsletter in 1995, and I
summarize them again below. I do not believe a great deal has happened in the two decades since
that time to change the underlying forces at play, which – as I mentioned at the outset –
challenge any attempt to develop collective programs for archival development.

There is a deficiency in the current Canadian archival system. No matter what types of archival
materials are managed – corporate, church, personal, government, or otherwise – the vast
majority of archival repositories in this country, are institutionally based. That is, they are
established and managed by a larger institution, such as: a government agency, a university, a
community group, a business, or a non-profit organization. These archival institutions exist to
perform a specific, mandated task: either to acquire and manage institutional records and
archives, or to acquire and preserve non-institutional archives for specific research purposes.
Because these repositories are answerable to their institutional masters, their ability to participate
in collective initiatives, particularly in the area of acquisition, is constrained. Their first priority
is to their own organization, not to the wider archival community or Canadian society.
Because it is made up of such institutions, the CCA has to serve its members' needs first and
foremost or they, the archival repositories that comprise that membership, will simply not
participate. Much as individual archivists may wish to support collective initiatives, they must
take direction from their institutional leaders, which overwhelmingly requires that archival
service focus on the institution's priorities and requirements. Inevitably then, because of this
systematic pressure to address institutional priorities, the CCA has become an organization
whose success is measured by how effective its members believe it is in serving their specific
needs, not its success in supporting the wider and less tangible goal of preserving Canada
documentary heritage.
For example, when the CCA was first created a number of national priorities were identified to
address issues such as the need for descriptive standards, the lack of quality conservation
strategies, limited access to archives, and the lack of coordination over acquisition. At the time
though, the archival community argued that reducing the backlog of unprocessed archives in
their particular repositories was their first institutional priority. Participation in national
initiatives would have to wait until the backlog had been addressed. As a result the CCA
established a temporary funding program to help their members reduce their backlogs. The CCA
did link institutional requirements with national priorities by supporting the use of Rules for
Archival Description (developed by the Bureau of Canadian Archivists in 1990), but if archival
institutions had not received CCA funding to reduce their backlogs, there is no guarantee that
they would have adopted RAD as a descriptive tool. As the years progressed, the number of
national initiatives steadily decreased while the backlog reduction program, i.e. money that could
be used to process institutional archives, continued under a number of different titles, drawing an
ever-increasing percentage of the budget, until LAC discontinued this funding in 2011.
By definition, a national acquisition strategy focuses on records not covered by existing
acquisition mandates: neglected or “orphaned” records, as it were. At one time, it might have
been realistically hoped that existing archival institutions would expand their mandates to cover
such neglected records. However that is no longer the case. Archival operations perform within
the confines of a specific, and often relatively narrow, mandate. It is not easy, if it is even
possible, to ask for more resources to expand the repository’s scope of acquisitions beyond the
limits already defined by the institution. More problematic is the difficulty of preserving digital
records. Unlike analog archives, which can simply go on a shelf until resources are available to
process them, and which may stay safe and unchanged for decades, digital records demand

immediate attention to ensure they are adequately preserved. They also demand significant, often
scarce, institutional resources.
A national acquisition strategy requires that the archival community grow beyond its
professional and institutional boundaries. The people who create records, and the people who use
those records (from records creators to historians, lawyers, and the general public), are those who
perceive a need for an archival repository. They alone can create archives. Archivists don't
establish mandates, and they don’t create archival institutions; they work in them.

Ultimately, I do not believe Canadian archival repositories can be effective partners in any
collective archival initiative, be it acquisition planning or other national priorities, if those
initiatives do not first and foremost directly support the sponsor institution’s responsibility to
look after its own records. What is missing in this equation is an entity with the mandate and
resources to support the overall well-being of Canada’s documentary heritage, irrespective of
institutional or professional demands. The current Canadian archival network consists of the
CCA and its provincial and territorial members, which are dedicated to the interests of archival
institutions, along with the ACA, AAQ, and provincial and territorial associations dedicated to
the interests of archival professionals. Effectively no one speaks exclusively on behalf the
documentary record. The solution may be the creation of such an independent entity, with the
mandate to promote, support, sustain, and expand Canada’s documentary heritage wherever it is
found. Such an organization could be an agent of change. It could take over all the strategic
functions initially envisioned for the CCA, including activities such as developing a national
acquisition strategy, creating and overseeing an endowment fund, conducting preservation
research, and so on.
Critical to the success of such an agency is that it have stable and sufficient funding to fulfil its
responsibilities. Most importantly, this entity should be composed of a board of directors that
includes representatives from outside the archival community: people who have a stake in the
documentary heritage of Canada but not specifically in the promotion of their profession or the
protection of their particular institution. Ideal board members would include historians,
genealogists, lawyers, social and physical scientists, economists, and so on. I believe other
countries, including the United Kingdom, the United States, and Australia, have implemented a
similar approach to the strategic development of their documentary heritage resources.

For Canada to move forward with any collective archival effort, we must stop relying only on
archival institutions and archival professionals. We must engage the public in the important goal
of valuing society’s records and archives, so that the archival community can perform the
services we perform best: helping our institutions preserve their documentary heritage and,
thereby, creating a truly sustainable national archival system.
D. Richard Valpy

Yellowknife, NT
February 11, 2014