The Digital Curation Institute at the University of Toronto’s iSchool provides a rich, interdisciplinary environment for investigating principles and theory building related to the creation, management, use, interpretation and preservation of digital resources; conducting research on digital curation issues; and developing technologies and tools to support best practice in this area. The DCI promotes innovative multi-faceted research projects that involve collaboration among faculty, students, practitioners, and researchers both national, and internationality. It encourages research that utilize multi-methods approaches from the fields of critical information studies; library and information science; archives and record management; information systems, media, and design; cultural heritage; museum studies, knowledge management and information management.

The key objectives of this conference are to promote greater understanding of the issues of digital curation, digital preservation, digital libraries, advance research on digital curation, and defining the Digital Curation Institute’s research agenda.

Topics include: approaches for digital curation research; modeling for digital curation; risk, trust and certification; curating creative objects, digital libraries and digital repositories; digital curation and government records; experimentation.

Speakers:
Brian Cantwell Smith (iSchool, University of Toronto)
Costis Dallas (iDigital Curation Unit, Athena Research Centre)
Rea Devakos, University of Toronto
Fiorella Foscarini, (iSchool, University of Toronto)
Ross Harvey (Simmons GSLIS)
Hans Hofman (Nationaal Archief Netherlands)
Steve Hokema, (iSchool, University of Toronto)
John MacDonald (information management consultant and educator)
Andreas Rauber (Vienna University of Technology)
Seamus Ross (iSchool, University of Toronto)
Ravio Ruusalepp, (Estonia Business Archives)
Tom Hickerson (University of Calgary)
Anne Van Camp (Smithsonian Institute)

Includes information about records pertaining to Aboriginals and Torres Strait Islanders. 

The Community Archive is set up to allow users to tag records (and descriptions of records) with relevant subjects, creators, etc.  In doing so they allow their audience to interact with the archival material in a way that most archives do not.  It’s also nice to have a visual representation of the tags (assuming the most widely used tags are in larger/bold fonts).  Very neat! 

OurOntario.ca is a great place to host digital/online cultural heritage projects. Last year I worked on a local history project at Vaughan Public Libraries (Villages to City: An Oral History of Vaughan) and had a wonderful time.  The interface is user-friendly and there are numerous options. 

Interested in promoting your local history? Not sure how to access the necessary resources? Visit OurOntario.ca to see what is possible.

Taken from the OurOntario.ca About Page:

Who we are

Our Ontario is a unique partnership with cultural and heritage organizations of all shapes and sizes, designed to make our digital content discoverable to a global audience. We are part of Knowledge Ontario, a not-for-profit collaborative that offers programs and services addressing the information and learning needs of Ontarians in the digital environment.

What we do

Our goal is to help Ontarians of all ages discover the extraordinary stories contained in the digital collections of their culture and history organizations and communities. We leverage the discovery and sharing of Ontario’s culture, history and stories.

What we do for content organizations

Our Ontario services advance the discovery and sharing of Ontario digital content by developing cutting- edge technologies for use by a diverse group of content organizations. We partner with cultural heritage and community content organizations, offering our expertise in search technologies, and providing free tools, hosting and user interface for digital collectionr the digits.

What we do for the digital generation – that’s you!

OurOntario.ca, our state-of-the-art discovery portal, is one search across hundreds of sites – in seconds. We make it easy to find audio, video, text, government documents, images and collections about Ontario, or from an Ontario organization. You can get interactive with your search results – get more specific, bookmark your search, send results to one of your social media apps, view the results in Google Earth…and lots more.

Arnold Lupson’s photographs, which date from 1919 to 1949, are rich in views of First Nations personalities and activities, including the Sarcee (Tsuu T’ina), Blood, Peigan, Blackfoot (Siksika) and Stoney peoples of southern Alberta.

The annual meeting of the Special Interest Section on Aboriginal Archives (SISAA) is scheduled to take place on Wednesday, June 9, 1:00 pm-3:00 pm in the Lunenburg Room at the Westin Hotel. At the moment, there is no agenda for this meeting, but Jim Burant and Alain Roy of Library and Archives Canada would be willing to meet any interested ACA members at 2:30 to discuss LAC’s current modernization initiatives in relation to aboriginal heritage. Members are encouraged to attend earlier and to exchange information and ideas about the activities of the section.

SISAA focuses on the issues surrounding aboriginal archives in Canada. All members of SISAA are invited to attend. We warmly encourage other archivists, scholars and students to attend, as well.

For information on recent SISAA activities: please see our webpage at http://archivists.ca/content/special-interest-section-aboriginal-archives

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Source: Jim Burant - ARCAN-L Mailing List - June 5, 2010

The Aboriginal Archives Collaborative Project was established in May 2010 as a means of creating discussion about archives in aboriginal communities in Canada. 

The goal of the project is to explore the establishment of First Nations archives as well as using tools as resources such as Knowledge Ontario (OurOntario.ca) in carrying out community-based digitization and local history projects. In addition, the website will be used to share online information resources and to make relevant announcements. 

In the future, I would like to expand the project to include genealogical resources for aboriginal researchers and a separate space for discussion. 

Please visit the projects twitter page (abarchives) and PBWorks page. 

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My name is Ericka Brosseau and I am a recent graduate of the Master of Information Studies program at the University of Toronto.  My area of focus was Archives & Records Management and I am particularly interested in managing electronic records, the role of archives in marginalized communities and the use of web 2.0 applications such as blogs and wikis in archives. 

I am a member of Sagamok Anishnawbek and I grew up in Sudbury, Ontario.