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City of Edmonton Archives completes five projects
Glynns Hohmann, City of Edmonton Archives
The year 2003 was an exciting one for the City of Edmonton Archives. The Archives Society of Alberta and the Canadian Council of Archives generously awarded the City of Edmonton Archives with five grant projects. With the grant monies, the City of Edmonton Archives was able to hire Glynys Hohmann and Terry O'Riordan to complete the grants.
Glynys worked on the following two grants: the digitization of the Hubert Hollingworth glass slide collection and the collection condition survey and appropriate storage and housing of the Archives' large format photograph holdings (Phase 1). Terry undertook the three following projects: a survey of the Archives' cellulose nitrate and cellulose acetate material; the creation of a finding aid for a portion of its City of Edmonton Planning Department fonds; and the archival description of the manuscript fonds donated between 1996 and 1998.
Digitization of Hubert Hollingsworth glass slides
A grant from the Archives Society of Alberta allowed the City of Edmonton Archives to digitize - in true colour, tiff and jpeg formats - 1103 glass negative slides that were donated by Hubert Hollingworth, a prominent Edmonton photographer. These slides were not of images that he personally photographed, rather they were taken from books or photographs that other individuals had taken. Mr. Hollingworth re-photographed the original images in order to create glass slide negatives that were possibly used in glass slide presentations. The slides, which will be displayed in an on-line exhibit www.edmonton.ca and are temporarily housed on the Archives Society of Alberta's website www.archivesalberta.org, reflect two main subjects: missionary work and medical education.
The missionary slides are the most prolific of all the slides and reflect missionary work undertaken in Northern Alberta and British Columbia, Africa, China, India, and Afghanistan in the early to mid 1900s. The medical slides were created in a similar time period. More is known about their creators, the majority of whom taught at the University of Alberta. This portion of the collection includes slides on human and animal anatomy, embryonic development of the heart, and the pathology disease. In addition to the two main topics, there were also glass slides of the Second World War, the Canadian West, and Quebec.
Collection condition survey / rehousing : large-format photograph holdings
Another project for which the City of Edmonton Archives received funding was the preservation of its large-format photograph holdings. Glynys Hohmann surveyed the City of Edmonton Archives' large-format photographs, examined their condition, and ensured appropriate storage and housing. The final product was an 84-page survey and the ability to more easily locate and preserve the large-format photographs at the Archives. In total, 1184 images were surveyed, 289 had a condition report created and 287 were re-housed. Due to the large number of photographs reviewed, Glynns concentrated her efforts on the catalogued photographs at the City of Edmonton Archives. The non-catalogued items or the accessioned photographs will be more thoroughly examined in a second phase of the project that will be undertaken later this year. Conservator Cynthia Ball provided the Archives with her expertise, answering conservation questions and reviewing photographs as requested by the project archivist.
Collection condition survey : cellulose acetate / cellulose nitrate holdings
In a project funded by a CCA Preservation Management Programme grant, Terry O'Riordan conducted a collection survey of the City of Edmonton Archives' catalogued sheet negatives and rolled film holdings in order to identify the acetate and nitrate materials and to determine the current condition of the collections. This large project - over 20,000 negatives were inspected between October and December of last year - also drew on the expertise of conservator Cynthia Ball. In the concluding stages of the project Cynthia consulted on storage techniques and she also review negatives deemed a concern. As a result of work completed in this project, the problematic acetate and nitrate negatives will be removed from their current storage and moved to long term cold storage in the archives' new refrigerators and freezer.
Fonds-level description
Terry O'Riordan also completed the fonds-level description of approximately 119 private manuscript collections that had been donated to the City of Edmonton Archives by individuals and local organizations between 1996 and 1998. Many accessions were accruals for previously described fonds, and have been included with their related material. Notable among this group is the papers of former Edmonton mayor Ivor Dent, which has now been expanded to include additional material dealing with his long involvement with the Commonwealth Games Association of Canada, which followed his tenure as mayor of the City of Edmonton. In addition to these accruals, 40 new fonds have also described as a result of this project. Included in this material is information on the estate of Laurent (Lawrence) Garneau, an early Métis settler in Edmonton. In all, this CCA Control of Holdings Programme grant resulted in the completion of 81 fonds level descriptions, with 40 new fonds being included on the ANA online database.
Planning Department General Correspondence - Arrangement and Description
Terry's third project, funded by the ASA, involved the arrangement and description of 17 linear meters of City of Edmonton Planning and Development general correspondence and associate materials from 1970 to 1982. The growth of the city's population during this period necessitated the redevelopment of older communities, such as Jasper Place, Strathcona, and greater Downtown, the expansion of other communities, including Kaskitayo, West Jasper Place, and Clareview, and the creation of the new subdivisions of Castle Downs and Mill Woods to accommodate the increasing populace. In addition to overseeing the development of the residential communities, the Planning and Development Department was also responsible for the ongoing enlargement of the city's industrial areas to the north-west and to the south, with the expansion of city services, and with the extension of the city's Light Rail Transit System to the north-east. During this 12-year period, the landscape of Edmonton changed considerably, and this material reflects the developmental priorities of the city's planners during this transitional period.
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