The big thing I’ve noticed is that there are many, many people here between 25 and 30. Two sessions solely on student research were scheduled, and it’s clear that the strength and number of the university programs in archives is really beneficial to the profession.

 Marie-Louise Ayres

Curator of Manuscripts National Library of Australia

This year many archives students from FIS had the opportunity to attend the ACA conference in Kingston from the 20-23 June, 2007.  There were a total of eleven students from FIS, which many archivists in attendance claimed as an unprecedented event.  Of the eleven in attendance, five students from FIS also had the opportunity to make presentations.

Charles Levi, a first year archives student, was invited to participate in a session organized by the University and College Archivists Special Interests Section (UCASIS).  Charles discussed the strengths and weaknesses of a university archives in terms of resources, access policies and collections policies, and the impact this has had on his researching and writing of University histories at the University of Toronto, Laurentian University, and York University.

Lindsay Skay was the student chosen from FIS to participate in this years ACA student session. Her paper entitled "Power Play: Power and Ethics in Archives" discussed if archivists have power over the documents, or do the documents themselves contain power, or do both have different kinds of power at different times?

Chris Sanagan, Adam Birrell and Juanita Rossiter conducted their own session, “The Archival Profession Through the Eyes of Students."  Chris Sanagan, whose paper was entitled, “You Never Forget Your First Time,” discussed his introduction to archives, as well as the Student Chapter’s attempt at publishing a book of case studies of student’s arrangement reports from their arrangement and description class at FIS.  Adam Birrell, the first President of the FIS Student Chapter talked about the activities of the student chapter as well as attempts at creating a wiki for archival form and function.  Juanita Rossiter talked about her participation in the first FIS Internship at the Nelson Mandela Foundation in Johannesburg, South Africa in the summer of 2006.

                                                                                      Front row: (L to R): B. George, C. Maloney, C. Sanagan

                                                                                      Middle Row: L. Skay and J. Rossiter

                                                                                      Back Row: A. Birrell, D. Hughes and R. Namasato