The next installment in my series of archivist interviews introduces us to the world of municipal archives through a Q&A with Gina Coady, Archivist Assistant at the Elgin County Archives in St. Thomas, Ontario.
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Can you give us an overview of the collections?
Acquiring, preserving and providing access to Elgin County Municipal Records is the Archives’ principal responsibility.These include council minutes, by-laws, tax assessment rolls, maps, voters lists and other records of the county government and its sixteen former and current local governments dating back to 1852 (or earlier in some cases).
The Archives is fortunate to have a complete set of records from the Elgin County Clerk’s Office since its inception, documenting many aspects of the area’s social and economic development, including petitions on matters such as temperance, social welfare, justice and the need for infrastructure.
We are also home to the Scott Studio fonds, a collection which numbers close to 100,000 negatives from three generations of studio photographers, documenting many aspects of local life in Elgin County; the Alma College fonds, records of the internationally known educational institution for young women that operated on St. Thomas from 1881 to 1986; we possess records from several Elgin County Women’s Institutes, including “Tweedsmuir Histories” for communities throughout the County, providing a female perspective of life in rural Ontario throughout the twentieth century.
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How long have you worked at the Elgin County Archives and how did you become interested in working in this field?
I have worked at the Elgin County Archives for 13 years (I started in October 2002). The archives didn’t formally open until November 2002, so I’ve been lucky to be here right from the beginning, which means that I had a say in how things were organized, and I was here when some of our biggest and most important collections were added to the climate-controlled shelving and/or were processed and described for the first time. I have also helped to transform our database from a Microsoft Access database, which was only accessible internally, to our current online Inmagic DB/Text WebPublisher database.
I started out University wanting to be a Wildlife Biologist, but I soon found out that I wasn’t an outdoors girl, and wouldn’t enjoy being out in the field doing research for long periods of time! I knew that I loved maps, and libraries, and history, and when I switched my Major from Biology to Geography, I decided to volunteer at the Archives of Manitoba. I greatly enjoyed describing some of their homesteading records, which included interesting information about many of the early European settlers in Manitoba. I decided to take my Master of Library and Information Science at the University of Western Ontario, and was hoping to work at either an archives or at an academic or government institution as a map librarian. I was very fortunate to be offered the job of Archivist Assistant at the Elgin County Archives a little over a month after completing my MLIS degree.
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What are your current duties and projects?
I am primarily responsible for the following:
- processing municipal records
- adding and editing records into the Archives’ database and database maintenance
- reference work (in reference room)
- answering long-distance research requests
- processing accessions
- supervising students working on description projects
- supervising students with online exhibit projects
- selecting photographs for publication in the Bygone days sections of the St. Thomas Times-Journal and Aylmer Express, and uploading the St. Thomas Times-Journal photographs to Flickr.
4. Can you tell us about one of your favourite items?
My favourite item is the Alma College Graduates’ Roll. It was signed by each member of the annual graduating class between 1883 and 1988. Graduates signed their name under the graduation pledge and year, and are listed alphabetically and occasionally by diploma. It is interesting because it documents a valuable institution in St. Thomas history, an early example of higher education for young women, and I find that it is also a valuable tool for researching whether someone graduated from Alma College, and researchers always get excited when the signature of their grandmother or great-grandmother on the roll.
Thank you, Gina!
You can learn more about the Elgin County Archives on their website.
If you missed it, read the first archivist interview here.
Please leave your comments and questions below.