Do you have material that is related to the RASC Edmonton Centre stored in your home?
Please consider donating it to the Provincial Archives of Alberta (PAA). Instead of potentially valuable historical material languishing in our basements, it can be shared with our fellow Albertans at no cost to you.
We have an agreement with the PAA regarding the storage and maintenance of the vast number of materials and records of the Edmonton Centre and its members that are in storage or in our homes. This material is potentially valuable to many different groups of people, including RASC members (like you!), researchers and students from universities and colleges throughout Alberta, and history buffs. Sharing our material ensures that it will be well looked after in a climate-controlled, preservation-friendly environment, catalogued by experts (with contents described online), and available freely to the public.
The Edmonton Centre’s activities, and its associated people, have played an important role in the history of our province, and the associated materials aid in preserving and showcasing the Centre’s history.
Please consider gathering your materials and when you are ready to donate, please contact the PAA at
https://provincialarchives.alberta.ca/how-to/donate-your-records.
Here’s an overview on donating, from an article in the June 2015 Stardust.
Donating to the PAA is a good idea, for many reasons:
- The materials are kept safe in a climate-controlled environment. No more worrying about a flood destroying historical documents!
- All records will be described and these descriptions would be available in an online database.
- Present and future scholars would benefit from access to the type of RASC-related material you might have in your home. You never know when someone might want to choose the topic of The History of the RASC Edmonton Centre for their PhD dissertation!
- Most importantly, the materials would be available for the public to view – this includes all of you! Many people might find it interesting to know what was important to members from 30 years ago.
What types of materials should you donate? According to the PAA web site,
The Provincial Archives are interested in records that document the core functions of a business or organization. They reflect the way organizations develop and grow – they document essential activities, decisions, legal obligations and responsibilities. Examples of these types of records include policies and procedures, minutes, legal agreements, correspondence, architectural plans, records of assets, maps and photographs. Records follow function and are created for a purpose, which often have legal implications.
See https://provincialarchives.alberta.ca/how-to/donate-your-records for more information.
To donate one or more boxes of material, all you need to do is bring the box(es) to the Provincial Archives, located at 8555 Roper Road. Front desk staff will ask you to fill out a very short form indicating your name, a brief description of the contents of the box, and whether or not you’d like to have non-accepted material returned to you or destroyed. Then, you will leave the box with the staff member at the front desk (and your basement will be cleaner!).
Here are some tips:
- While it is certainly OK and expected that you’ll check the content of the box, archiving practices dictate that you should not disturb the order of materials in the box. The order in which the contents of the box were placed is an important piece of information for archivists. Think of this as saving you a lot of work – no organizing or sorting to do beforehand!
- Don’t worry about finding a nice or archive-friendly box to place your contents in. The PAA has acid-free file folders and boxes in which they will place your materials.
- Visit the archives during business hours from Tuesday to Saturday. For hours of operation, please see: https://provincialarchives.alberta.ca/who-we-are/contact-us/visiting-paa
Please consider gathering your materials and when you are ready to donate, please contact the PAA at
https://provincialarchives.alberta.ca/how-to/donate-your-records.