CFP: 2018 Archives Association of Ontario (AAO) Conference

September 10, 2017

The Archives Association of Ontario (AAO) is pleased to announce its Call for Papers for the 2018 AAO Conference to be held 9-11 May in Waterloo, Ontario.

Celebrations: The good, the bad, and the ugly

Celebrations come in many forms, and they can be judged successful or less so. The past five years have seen two major government-driven national celebrations—the War of 1812 bicentennial and the Canadian Confederation sesquicentennial celebrations—as well as many more regional and local, and more grassroots celebrations. We celebrate International Archives Day on June 9; we celebrate Archives Awareness Week on the first week of April. And certainly we celebrate our own achievements by holding public launches of digital exhibits, by mounting physical exhibits, by going into classes and showing the value of primary resources, by running outreach events at community festivals. All of these activities might be considered celebrations of the rich array of archival materials we make available to the world.

BUT… Sometimes our celebrations can be controversial, or get us into trouble. Sometimes celebrations can delay or derail other work. Grant funding tied to specific celebrations affects how we plan our projects and programs. Sometimes celebrations present skewed emphases on, or interpretations of, events.

The conference theme for 2018 will focus on celebrating: what we collect, what we do, who we are as a profession. However, this conference will not examine just celebrations themselves in their many forms, whether successful or not, but also the concept of celebration.

The AAO 2018 Program Committee, therefore, invites proposals which speak to any aspect of the broad theme of celebrations.

Topics can include:

• How does one evaluate the success of an archival outreach program or initiative?
• How have changes in Ontario archives and the archival profession affected how we work?
• Should we celebrate something that didn’t go as planned? A failed project?
• What does a celebration of the future look like?
• Does the celebration of single/discrete past events strengthen public awareness of archives, or does it distract from the many other ways in which our records are valuable and necessary?
• Should we actually be celebrating or should we be taking a step back and critically analyzing our work and practices?
• Canada’s 150^th celebrations: boom or bust?

Submissions of proposals for papers and posters are invited.

The proposals should be sent with a brief abstract of no more than 250 words and a bio to:

AAO Office at aao@aao-archivists.ca

Use the subject line format: AAO 2018 Conference Proposal_[last name, first name]

If you get a panel proposal together, please select a “point person” for your panel group and use the subject line format: AAO 2018 Conference Proposal_PANEL-[title]-[last name, first name]

The deadline to submit proposals is December 15, 2017.

The 2018 AAO Conference will include, depending on student interest / response, a Student Papers session and, possibly a Poster session.

A separate call for student submissions will be issued early 2018.

On behalf of the AAO 2018 Conference Program.