Grants and Contributions

The project focuses on fonds with a national scope that have never been processed or described to Rules for Archival Description (RAD) standards, despite their heavy use. A project archivist will be hired to appraise, process, arrange, and describe these collections. Descriptions and finding aids will be available through an online database. This will ensure effective knowledge mobilization, allowing Canadian and international researchers and the public to know what collections are held and are available for study.

The Cinémathèque québécoise is seeking to digitize and restore the film components of the documentary series Le Son des Français d’Amérique, in order to preserve these films and to make them accessible on digital platforms. Co-directed from 1974 to 1980 by Quebec filmmakers André Gladu and Michel Brault, this series consists of 27 30-minute episodes, each dedicated to the musical and sung heritage of the Francophone cultures of America. The related audiovisual archives are kept at the Cinémathèque and, since 2017, have been included in the UNESCO International Memory of the World Register.

The Multicultural History Society of Ontario (MHSO) is rearranging and re-describing its archival holdings in a multi-year initiative. Its overall objective is to increase public awareness of, and access to, archival materials documenting the histories of ethnocultural and Indigenous communities. In the final phase of the initiative, the Society will focus on collections of hardcopy newspapers and newsletters currently in storage. Specifically, it will review and appraise 325 newspapers and 585 newsletters produced by / for 50 different communities. It will rearrange—both physically and intellectually—and then re-describe these materials. It will prepare administrative histories based on research it conducts for the newspapers and the organizations that produced the newsletters.

Sharing the Digital Collection at Manitoba Indigenous Cultural Education Centre Inc. is a project aimed at organizing, cataloguing, and increasing access to, the hundreds of hours of recordings housed at the Manitoba Indigenous Cultural Education Centre (MICEC), in Winnipeg.
Over the last year, MICEC has digitized more than 700 hours of recordings dating to the 1960s. These recordings provide valuable insights and educational opportunities for all Manitobans and all Canadians. With holdings that range from materials documenting pivotal moments in Canadian history, such as Canada's centennial celebrations in 1967 and the 1982 constitutional negotiations, to priceless recordings of Indigenous knowledge keepers speaking and sharing lessons and songs in their original languages, to educational materials produced by and for Indigenous communities dating to the 1970s, the digital archive at MICEC can become a rich and varied source of learning for researchers, archivists, Indigenous and non-Indigenous communities, and all Canadians.

The Kaatza Historical Society wishes to modernize its forest industry archival collections, by (1) creating descriptions and finding aids that follow the Rules of Archival Description, and (2) ensuring access for researchers and members of the public. We wish to use the Documentary Heritage Community Grant to pay the wages of an archivist and to cover the costs of equipment necessary for safely storing these historical documents and making them accessible.

The Frog Lake Library will work with local libraries and postsecondary institutions in order to build internal and community capacity to digitize and share knowledge from documentary, oral and embedded sources about Frog Lake First Nations’ (FLFNs) histories, so that the Nations’ continuing memory is documented, preserved, and available to the public for current and future generations. This project will lead to digitizing a collection of historical paper documents, which will be contextualized with knowledge from local Elders and then made available online for the purpose of increasing access to, and awareness of, FLFNs’ local documentary heritage.

The Rossland Museum and Discovery Centre (RMDC) completed a high-level inventory of its archival collection in 2020. During this inventory, RMDC identified several sets of items that would benefit from digitization. These collections, previously unknown or under-utilized, consist of 180 level maps of the Rossland mines and a collection of almost 1,000 photo negatives of individuals and scenes related to Rossland’s history. The objectives of this project are to digitize and rehouse these items and add them to RMDC’s online database.

The Winnipeg Architecture Foundation Archives Phase 2 project relates to five fonds in the Winnipeg Architecture Foundation (WAF) collection. These fonds contain materials related to several of Winnipeg’s most significant buildings and their designers. The main objectives of the project are to increase access, better preserve originals, and inform WAF’s research and public programmes. The project closely aligns with the Foundation’s mandate to advance awareness and appreciation of Winnipeg’s built environment.

The OJA’s Mitigating Risk project aims to correct this historic neglect by addressing its magnetic media holistically, including the selection, conservation, digitization, rehousing, digital preservation, and description of all 425 ¼"" open-reel recordings. By completing this project, the OJA will fulfill its mandate of preserving its collection to the highest archival standards and providing access to this rich and underutilized resource.

The VHEC proposes a multi-year project to migrate catalogue and accession records that describe materials donated by Vancouver-based Holocaust survivors and Jewish refugees imprisoned in Canadian internment camps during WW2, currently described and accessible in a legacy Filemaker Pro database near the end of its lifespan. This project will increase public access to and awareness of catalogue records describing the VHEC’s documentary heritage.
As part of this project, the VHEC will enhance the accessibility of five oral histories by producing and uploading time-coded summaries to their testimony catalogue records.