After over a century on the U of T campus, the United Church of Canada/ Victoria University Archives are set to close in December. Housed in Victoria’s Emmanuel College, the archive contains the United Church of Canada’s national records, as well as other documents related to the history of the church and Victoria University.
Since its establishment in 1899, the archive has been jointly funded and maintained by the United Church and Victoria University. Recently, however, the church and the university ended their partnership due to concerns about cost and space. The United Church archive will be relocated.
An agreement between the United Church and Victoria University stipulates that the two organizations would each pay half of the cost of operating the archives until 2013. In 2006, however, the university announced that it would no longer fund the archives. The United Church has found itself unable to finance them independently, and in April of this year Victoria administration voted to close the archives. The church agreed to relocate their portion of the archive, and the partnership between the church and university was officially dissolved in May.
The United Church archives are often used by those researching history, theology and anthropology. In addition to the major church records, the collection includes documents from local congregations and missionaries, and a large collection of related print and multimedia material. The church’s marriage and baptismal records are extensively used for genealogical and demographic research.
The Save the Archives Coalition, led by researchers and library clients concerned that their opinions were not taken into consideration, has sprung up to challenge the the church and university’s decision. On their website, savethearchives. ca, a petition to keep the archives open has garnered nearly 1400 signatures. Craig Heron, a York professor and coalition leader, explained that the coalitions goal was “to convince the church and the university not to close the archives on the Victoria campus, and to work together on finding appropriate and sufficient space there.”
The coalition’s major concerns include temporary unavailability of archival material during the move, and the possibility that experienced staff will not be rehired when the archives open in their new location. Space, the coalition stresses, should not be the deciding factor, as many other archives and libraries make effective use of offsite storage. Heron continued by saying that the real issue behind Victoria’s decision was probably financial, not spatial.
Prof. David Keeling, the Bursar at Victoria University, described the protests as the result of a “massive misunderstanding.” He emphasized that the decision to relocate was made mutually between the church and the university, after analyzing the problems of cost and space. The archives have been growing rapidly, and will soon run out of room at Emmanuel College. It was therefore agreed, Keeling explained, that the Victoria archive would remain in its current location, while the United Church would move their collection to another facility. Although the archives will be unavailable during the move, Keeling said it will soon be reopened. Their new location, however, has not as yet been announced.
