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Re: Who uses archives?



Mark and others,

Certainly it would be great to include Canada in my survey.  I confined it
to the US, England, and Iceland because I knew of studies conducted in the
latter two and because I live here in the US  I will think on the best way
to do so, or perhaps, if you'd like you, could work on the Canadian
part.  I would be happy to assist in whatever way I
could, and the more joint projects we have, the better.  We here in the US
generally I
think are in awe of what the Canadians have accomplished and know you have
a much more comprehensive approach to keeping records than we do.

Thanks, too, to all who have responded and also for all the information
about the beginnings of archives in so many institutions.  I especially
liked getting the statistics from Cindy Sauer.

As to any hesitancies people may have about the survey because it asks
for information dealing with the period before 1965, please
know that there is the opportunity to leave those years blank. I ask for
those years because certainly some archives existed, and many more
reading rooms for manuscripts, with archives therein, had users.  Also in
the early years of library history in general, there were statistics kept
on gender and use, at least in England and major public libraries in the
US.

Jim Cross suggested that I ask for statistics for the year 1985 as well,
considering that Not only is it 20 years past the 1965 date, which is as
Dean and others noted when most archives started,  but it is the year
before Paul Conway's _American Archivist_ article ("Facts and Frameworks: An
approach to studying the users of archives," vol. 49, no. 4, Fall 1986,
p.393-407) on measuring users and use, which included a sample
registration/user statistics form. It is three years after SAA published
its _Archival Forms Manual_ (1982) which included sample registration
forms, etc. And it is eight years after the publication of the basic
manual on reference (1977) by SAA.  He raises an excellent point, which I
will try to accommodate.

Thanks to all, again, and indeed, Mark, if you want to help with a
Canadian section, write me.


Susan Tucker
Curator of Books and Records
Newcomb College Center for Research on Women
Tulane University
New Orleans, La. 70118
susannah@mailhost.tcs.tulane.edu

On Wed, 8 Mar 2000, Mark Walsh wrote:

> Susan and my American Colleagues -
>
> Now I read Dean's reply...and I am just wondering if there is a reason why
> the Great White North is excluded....our National Archives dates from
> 1872...and the Archives of Ontario from 1904 I believe....the Hudson's Bay
> Company Archives, a division of the Provincial Archives of Manitoba was
> transferred to Canada in 1974...but has documentation on that archives
> dating back to its opening in London in 1922...
>
> Mark (Canadian archival jingoist Imperialist dog) Walsh
>
>
>

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