Summer 2004

Volume 23 Number 4

IN THIS ISSUE

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Thanks to the financial assistance from the federal government through the National Archives of Canada and Canadian Council of Archives which makes possible the CCA Control of Holdings programme. The long planned goal which received a 2003 2004 grant was the appraisal, arrangement and description of the records in the ECW PRESS fonds housed in Special Collections, University of Calgary.

While not specializing in publishing archives, an area very ably handled by institutions such as Simon Fraser University and McMaster University, we did begin to acquire accessions of the ECW PRESS in 1982 not only because of the importance of the records themselves but also because this publishing firm had a strong connection with the various authors (Hugh Hood, Clark Blaise, Leon Rooke, John Metcalf) whose personal papers were also being acquired by Special Collections.

The records were acquired over a number of years with the latest accession in 2003. Over the years discussions with Jack David of ECW PRESS, based on the excellent publications by Laura Millar, led to greater refinement of the PRESS's own selection of records being sent for permanent retention but the earlier records had not undergone such rigorous selection. And this is precisely what we had hoped to do since we were fortunate to have Shirley Onn, former Director of the University of Calgary Press available to undertake the grant project.

Shirley Onn's experience with running a press and with appraising records for permanent retention deposited in the University of Calgary Archives made her an invaluable colleague to work on the early records. She analysed the organization of the fonds identifying the various series and those records, especially financial records, which were of permanent value. She, in consultation with Marlys Chevrefils, completed the fonds and series descriptions, and prepared the finding aid descriptions of the accessions which were able to be completed in the time frame of the grant. One positive result was that a greater number of records were physically appraised that had first been anticipated. During the course of the grant period we encountered an unanticipated situation beyond everyone's control which has reinforced our appreciation of the importance of having adequate and suitable processing space.

Further work will proceed in 2004 on the remaining portion of the ECW PRESS fonds which was not able to be completed during the grant period. The work will be funded through Information Resources. Special Collections is grateful for this additional funding and for the initial support which the Archives Society of Alberta gave to our grant application.

ECW PRESS has undergone significant changes throughout its thirty year history as is evident from the archival records. I look forward to hearing Jack David talk about ECW PRESS in June 2004 at McMaster University during the time of the annual meeting of the Bibliographical Society of Canada, a meeting whose theme this year is Canadian publishing.