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What is the Role of
the Archivist in Documenting
Society in a Society that is
Increasingly Documenting
Itself?
Archivists in digital age
Laura Millar
Presentation to KVAN, Gouda, 29 October 2014
Family history
I would like to start my remarks today with a small story, which
begins with my visit to Amsterdam a year ago, when my husband
and I enjoyed a lovely lunch with Theo, followed by a visit to the
Amsterdams Historisch Museum. After our time in Amsterdam
and then in Brussels for the Conference of the International
Council on Archives, my husband andI travelled to Ieper and
other First World War sites in Belgium and France.
On our return home to Canada, I grew curious about
my grandfather's time in that war. I knew that my father had
served in the Second World War, and that his father had served
in both the First and Second Wars. I had once seen digital copies
of my grandfather's First World War attestation papers, after
typing his name into a computer terminal at the Canadian War
Museum in Ottawa and getting a 'hit' that led me to his 1916
enlistment record. But I knew little more than that. Indeed,
I know virtually nothing about my ancestors, near or far, which
is a consequence of a highly fraught and complicated family
history.
So I decided to sign up with Ancestry.ca and see what I could
learn from this rather mysterious genealogical tool. I had some
reservations, as you can imagine; I knew I was descending the
slippery slope from 'archivist' to 'genealogist'. But the need to
know about my grandfather was pressing enough to draw
me to the dark side.
Imagine my surprise - shock would be a better word - to
discover that not only had my grandfather, Thomas Annandale
Millar, served in the First World War, but so had his three brothers
- I didn't even know he had three brothers - as well as their
father, my great-grandfather. My great grandmother, Minnie
Constance Millar, born Minnie Constance Taylor in Marylebone,
London, in 1865, was left alone in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada,
for I don't know how many years, waiting for news of her husband
and four sons - her entire family - who were at war so far away.
And I learned that one of her sons, Frank Galt Millar, was killed on
August 5th, 1916, aged 27, a month after his brother, my
grandfather, joined up, and that Great Uncle Frank was buried
at the Railway Dugouts Burial Ground, near Zillebeke, Belgium.
I had no idea that he had died. I had no idea that he had lived.
Ancestry.ca introduced me to my great uncle Frank, because
this digital tool had aggregated records preserved and digitized
by repositories such as Library and Archives Canada, and
because it had created indexes and crosswalks and search tools
that allow users like me not only to find out about the people we
knew existed - like my grandfather Thomas Annandale - but also
about the people we did not know existed - like my great uncles
Frank Galt, Hugh Stanley, and Reginald Morrison Millar, and my
