The work of archives is not well understood, even among our most traditional researcher groups. This issue is more pronounced when we consider new and emerging user groups. Closing the gap of understanding is the responsibility of archives everywhere.
In working to raise awareness and understanding of the relevance and value of archives, Nova Scotia Archives have turned our attention to creating tools that will improve accessibility to archival holdings for a broader and more diverse range of user groups and have reshaped our thinking about who an archives “user” really is or could be.
We have always known that archival materials can play a key role in “education”. Nova Scotia Archives is frequently called upon to provide in-class sessions, familiarization workshops, subject specific presentations, etc. These requests come not only from the grade level education system, but also from post-secondary institutions and a wide range of disciplines. In recent years we have also found ourselves working to fill the needs of community-based learning groups and of self-directed learners. Increasingly, we have noted that people are looking for a reflection of themselves and their current day context in historic documents – a personal connection to the past. Keeping this ever-growing and diversifying base of users in mind, we began imagining how we could utilize existing digitized resources and tools in a new way to create an online “place” where both teachers and learners could engage with archival materials to meet their individual needs.
Launched in January 2024, “Teaching & Learning Resources” is the first phase of what we describe as a “sandbox” for teachers and learners. In the resource we have attempted to address the needs of users through the creation of videos, interactive tools, and questions to guide exploration.
This section of the Nova Scotia Archives website has a purposefully distinct look and feel compared to other parts. A distinct colour, font, and layout have been chosen to signal clearly to the user that they are in a distinct “place” with a distinct purpose. The area contains everything that the user will need to explore and engage with archival materials in the context of teaching and learning.
The introduction video provides a high-level, but comprehensive, look at what an archive is and does. While it is visually specific to Nova Scotia Archives, the core functions of any archival repository are reflected here. This was an essential component of the web product as we recognize that our first responsibility when engaging with any audience is introducing ourselves and our work in the hopes that we can dispel some of the trepidation that first-time users often feel and make that first step on the journey of promoting understanding.
Teaching & Learning Resources will be an ever-expanding area of the Archives’ website, with the first body of content being records by and about Mi’kmaw people and communities. Materials are all under the care of Nova Scotia Archives and are also available in the Mi’kmaq Holdings Resource Guide section of the Archives’ website. Community consultation took place throughout the development of this section of Teaching & Learning Resources.
The tools of Transcribe, Translate, and Name Drop encourage engagement with the archival materials. Transcribe challenges users to test their skills of reading cursive handwriting. Translate provides language learners with an opportunity to translate archival documents, most often written in English, into the language of their choice. The tool provides the opportunity to translate, as the resource states, “maybe even into the language of the community that they were written about”. These two tools are designed to function as “wipe boards” whereby nothing is saved by the website. Users of these tools can save or print their activity, and it remains for their purposes only.
Name Drop encourages users to share their personal or community knowledge to help the Archives enhance existing information about the photographs in this section.
Throughout Teaching & Learning Resources we have provided users with “questions to consider” as they explore the groupings of archival materials. The website offers the user the capacity to generate a worksheet with these questions for each and every document, map, and photograph in the section – all you must do is click on the printer icon. Additionally, we have provided some “advanced questions to consider”. These offer the user an opportunity for deeper exploration, and to encourage connection-making between and among the archival materials found in the resource.
These questions were developed after examination of Nova Scotia’s grade level curriculum, exploration of existing web-based educational resources from many jurisdictions, consultation with teachers and learners in a variety of contexts, and consultation with community partners. They are intended to offer openness for exploration, and to generate thinking and competency-building in the broad categories of: comparison and contextualization, interpreting the evidence, chronological reasoning and causation, evaluating the evidence, and geographic reasoning.
Our hope is that this very special resource will meet the needs of many users and be a tangible step toward improved accessibility and understanding of archival materials.
Patti Bannister, Provincial Archivist of Nova Scotia