The ArQuives Collection Development Plan 2023- 2027 is a document to articulate collecting priorities for the organization over the next five years. This plan will allow The ArQuives to make consistent and transparent decisions regarding new acquisitions that will enhance the collection, improve our programming, and work to address the systemic historical inequities within our organization.
The Collection Development Plan has been created as a part of an ongoing process to make our collections more accessible to the public and offer transparency of our professional practices. This work has included a significant redescription project for all archival collections to bring them to professional Canadian archival standards, a large cataloging project to describe artifact and artwork collections, making our collections accessible to the public via our Online Collections Portal, and a Collections Review Project that reviewed our collecting practices by assessing our existing holdings.
The Collection Development Plan 2023-2027 has several goals, including supporting staff and volunteers working with the collection and creating a transparent document to guide The ArQuives’ decision-making process so that we are accountable to ourselves, our Strategic Plan, and our community. The ArQuives holds an amazing collection of material and the aim of The Collection Development Plan is to actively work at making it more representative and accessible to the community.
This plan will be supported by annual budget allocation for processing collections and making descriptions accessible online, partnerships, and yearly programming, including exhibitions, events, tours, and educational programming.
The Collections Development Plan 2023-2027 has been created with the following principles at its core: access, representation, documentation, inclusion, contextuality, respect, reliability, reciprocity, responsibility, and preservation.
You can find a copy of the Plan here.