Middlesex Centre Archives

We need County support for a Total Archives

We need County support for a Total Archives

Glencoe & District Historical Society

Call to Action for A Middlesex County Archives


The Canadian Government created the Public Archives of Canada in 1872.  In Europe, archives retained government records only with personal papers going to libraries as manuscripts.  The Dominion Archivist of Canada determined that all personal records of historical and cultural value should be collected as well as government records, with both being stored in the Public Archives.  This Total Archives approach was a departure from other countries and is known as a Canadian contribution to archival theory and practice.  Over time, multi-media records were added to collections in addition to traditional paper records.  Many other national, regional archival programmes, as well as those in municipalities or universities, have adapted the total archives concept.  The area municipal and university archives adopt this strategy as does the Provincial Archives of Ontario. 

The benefit of this approach is that archives hold records for researchers about family history such as searching houses, land or any other item of interest. The government records also provide some of the information required in these searches.  Having municipal records available – if they are open to the public – are advantageous to researchers and also to Municipal Clerks or staff, who sometimes are contacted by genealogists with family history requests.  Municipal staff benefit by being able to transfer those questions to properly-trained staff who have access to, not only government records, but also personal papers and other resources.  This removes the need for municipal staff to answer questions in an already busy day and provides researchers with a one-stop location.   Genealogists account for over 40% of archives’ users who travel to areas specifically to visit Archives.  While there, their tourist dollars support restaurants, hotels, local merchants and other local amenities.  

An Archives is a program, not a project. Continued funding and municipal support are required to ensure the success of the Middlesex County Archives.

Written by the Committee to Establish a Middlesex County Archives, July 2021

The Mona Lisa

“It’s a Silent Fire”!

Glencoe & District Historical Society

Film industry pros sweat the possibility that many digital files will eventually become unusable — an archival tragedy reminiscent of the celluloid era.

Martin Scorsese: “The preservation of every art form is fundamental.”  

For the movie business, these are valuable studio assets — to use one example, the MGM Library (roughly 4,000 film titles including the James Bond franchise and 17,000 series episodes) is worth an estimated $3.4 billion to Amazon — but there’s a misconception that digital files are safe forever. In fact, files end up corrupted, data is improperly transferred, hard drives fail, formats change, work simply vanishes. “It’s a silent fire,” says Linda Tadic, CEO of Digital Bedrock, an archiving servicer that works with studios and indie producers. “We find issues with every single show or film that we try to preserve.” So, what exactly has gone missing? “I could tell you stories — but I can’t, because of confidentiality.”

Specialists across the space don’t publicly speak about specific lost works, citing confidentiality issues. So, only disquieting rumors circulate — along with rare, heart-stopping lore that breaches public consciousness. One infamous example: In 1998, a Pixar employee accidentally typed a fatal command function, instructing the computer system to delete Toy Story 2, which was then almost complete. Luckily, a supervising technical director who’d been working from home (she’d just had a baby) had a 2-week-old backup file.

Experts note that indie filmmakers, operating under constrained financial circumstances, are most at risk of seeing their art disappear. “You have an entire era of cinema that’s in severe danger of being lost,” contends screenwriter Larry Karaszewski, a board member of the National Film Preservation Foundation. His cohort on the board, historian Leonard Maltin, notes that this era could suffer the same fate as has befallen so many silent pictures and midcentury B movies. “Those films were not attended to at the time — not archived properly because they weren’t the products of major studios,” he says.

Excerpt from:

“It’s a Silent Fire”: Decaying Digital Movie and TV Show Files Are a Hollywood Crisis

BY GARY BAUM, CAROLYN GIARDINA. MARCH 15, 2024

Can you imagine digitising the Mona Lisa painting and destroying the original? The Magna Carta?  The British North America Act? 1798 Act of Parliament to create London District? The answer to  maintaining records is not paper or digital – it is both! 

Committee To Establish a Middlesex County Archives
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