Preserving and caring for records of enduring value means that the legacy of a person or community is kept for future generations. This is the mission of our archives. We hope this short video captures this.
archives
Resources for Religious Archivists
Did you know that the Society of American Archivists has a special section to advocate for and support religious archivists? It is the Archivists of Religious Collections Section and they provide valuable training support and resources to religious archivists.
One way they do this is by sharing resources such as forms and manuals and policies on their microsite. The resources are free to download and adapt and are available here: Models and Resources.
Another ways is through organizing and delivering Lunch and Learn webinars which are training sessions with amazing presenters! You can view recordings of these webinars on the YouTube channel: SAA ARCS Resources YouTube channel.
Besides the webinars, the Archivists of Religious Collections Section also holds Archival Chats which are open discussions around a topic, giving archivists the chance to network and share ideas.
Our archives is proud to support the work of the Society of American Archivists – Archivists of Religious Collections Section. The Congregation of the Sisters of St. Joseph in Canada generously hosts the Lunch and Learn and Archival Chat sessions that are open to all archivists, and provide invaluable support to religious archivists in particular.
My First Collaborative Exhibit
Rhiannon Allen-Roberts, Associate Archivist, Congregation of the Sisters of St. Joseph in Canada Consolidated Archives
From August to October, I had the pleasure of working with Mary Grace Kosta, Congregational Archivist, and Noelle Tangredi, eLearning Developer/Graphic Designer and caretaker of the St. Joseph’s Health Care Medical Artifacts Collection, to create an exhibit highlighting Mother Ignatia Campbell and the Sisters of St. Joseph’s first endeavours in healthcare in London. I had previously assisted with in-house exhibits and a traveling exhibit, so I was excited to put my newly learned skills to work.
Mother Ignatia Campbell is an impressive historical figure. Serving as the first General Superior of the congregation and foundress of St. Joseph’s Hospital are only a few of her many accomplishments. Our archives had prepared an in-house exhibit about her, and when that exhibit was being taken down in August, we reached out to Noelle to discuss potentially moving this exhibit to the St. Joseph’s Hospital heritage corner due to her connection to the hospital and knowing that some of her artifacts were kept in the Medical Artifacts Collection. We already had a history of collaboration. Since 2016, our archives has been training students in museum registration skills to catalogue the artifacts collection. In exchange, we have repatriated archival materials from the hospital to the archives. Together, the three of us decided that, since this event was to be hosted at the hospital, we should expand the focus from just Mother Ignatia to include the early days of the hospital. We also decided to include Mount Hope, as that was the first care facility the Sisters operated in London, and it is from it that the hospital grew.
With this in mind, I began my research. I dived deep into the life of Mother Ignatia Campbell, learning all I could about her and the early days of the Sisters of St. Joseph in London. I perhaps collected too much information, as I had 18 pages of detailed notes to compress into the exhibit description. But from my research I learned so much about Mother Ignatia Campbell, so many little anecdotes about her life that impacted her and led to her becoming the leader that she was, that I cannot find it in myself to think that it was truly too much. The thing about historical figures is that as time passes, they may seem less human. I wanted my exhibit description to cover everything about her and to get the viewer to empathize with this woman just as I had while doing my research. But that’s not possible in the small word count needed for an exhibit. How do you compress a person’s life into 500 words or less? Things must be cut, simplified, and minimized to get the main points across. I felt like I was erasing parts of Mother Ignatia. How could the viewer of this exhibit empathize with her as I had if they did not understand all she had gone through? If they didn’t know about the girl who left her home to dedicate herself to a life of faith at only 15 years old? Or how she questioned her faith enough to want to leave the congregation, only to stay and never doubt it again? Or how that moment impacted her for the rest of her life and made her compassionate to those questioning their own faith? And what about the Sisters, doctors, and staff who worked by her side and under her direction and who dedicated themselves to providing healthcare?
These figures were no longer just names on paper to me but people with compelling stories that deserved to be told. I desperately wanted to covey all of this to those viewing this exhibit, to try to get my exhibit description to show that these historical figures were people just like us who worked diligently to accomplish great things. In the end, even after chopping down so many anecdotes, the description was three pages long. This length would be fine for a short report, but it was far too long for an exhibit. I think this was the hardest part of designing the exhibit – deciding what points were most important to highlight. Luckily, I had Mary Grace’s experience to help me to chop down the unneeded fluff and highlight the key historical points. Her best advice was to “Let the artifacts speak for themselves!” With that and the focus on the early days of the Sisters’ work in healthcare in mind, I was able to compress the exhibit description into a far more acceptable length. I then sent it to Noelle who constructed beautiful graphic designs to display the text alongside photographs that I digitized from the archives.
The shift in focus from the original in-house exhibit also meant that we needed to reevaluate what artifacts to include. We wanted to keep the focus on Mother Ignatia but to make sure that the artifacts told the story of the Sisters’ involvement in healthcare. Mary Grace created a list of all the artifacts in our holdings that were connected to Mother Ignatia, Mount Hope, and St. Joseph’s Hospital. Then Noelle and I reviewed the artifacts and decided what to include, with Noelle adding the additional items that would be included from the Medical Artifacts Collection. We had to carefully decide on a balance between the personal artifacts of Mother Ignatia, the religious artifacts to highlight the foundations of the Sisters’ practices, medical artifacts to show what those early days of medicine were like, and daily life artifacts to show what life was like at that time. Each of these themes expanded on what was included in the exhibit description, allowing these artifacts to tell the story visually.
While preparing the artifacts, I learned about the importance of keeping track of what artifacts have been exhibited, and for how long, to reduce the light damage to which they would be exposed. We had to consider the physical limitations of the exhibit space, but Noelle came prepared with the dimensions of each case and we were able to determine a rough lay-out of where everything could fit. After this, I completed condition reports to record the condition of the artifacts prior to display. I learned that this is an especially important task when artifacts are going off-site, as it can help determine when an artifact is damaged and it is important for insurance purposes.
With our artifacts selected and Noelle working to prepare the graphic designs, the next step was to pack the exhibit and set it up. Then, tragedy struck! I fell ill and was unable to assist with the packing, delivery, or set-up. Luckily, Noelle and Mary Grace are a well-oiled machine, having worked together many times, and they set the whole exhibit up with no help needed from me. While I’ll hopefully be able to assist with the exhibit take-down, I’ll just have to be patient and hope that the next time our two institutions collaborate I’ll be able to assist with the set-up.
The fruits of our labour are now displayed in the heritage corner at St. Joseph’s Hospital, Zone A, Level 1, near the Richmond Street entrance. There, it is my hope that the artifacts speak for Mother Ignatia Campbell where I could not. That the viewer sees the habit and thinks about how she would pin her veil just-so with care each morning, how she would have used an oil lamp to check on the charges at Mount Hope, how she would have held those rosary beads in her hands while she prayed with all her conviction. That the viewer thinks about how that magnificent hospital was founded by committed people who did all they could to provide the most efficient healthcare possible. I think that is the power of the exhibit, to make the viewer connect these artifacts with the lofty historical figures. I hope that those who see the exhibit will see Mother Ignatia Campbell as she was; a diligent leader, a woman of extraordinary faith, and a person, just like you or me.
For more information about the display, please visit: The enduring legacy of Mother Ignatia
Archiving websites
We were very pleased to be accepted into the Internet Archives web archiving program, the Community Webs Program, this year. These days, so many organizations have websites, and these are sources of rich information about their organization, activities, and history. They are sources of multimedia including photographs, videos, and audio recordings. Websites are records just like physical materials, but they are different because they undergo constant change, and are subject to degradation and loss. In fact, according to Jill Lepore in her article in the New Yorker, “The Cobweb,” she states the lifespan of a webpage can be as little as 100 days! (see “The Cobweb,”)
So how do we preserve these fragile and ephemeral records? Thankfully, the vision of Brewster Kahle who founded the Internet Archive, has provided us with a tool, Archive-It, which can capture websites and replay them in their full functionality with another tool, the Wayback Machine.
As they explain it, the Community Webs Program provides participants with the opportunity to capture the stories of communities and diversify the historical record by preserving many voices. It provides the tools and skills to preserve the websites and social media platforms of local communities and their citizenry, attesting to their presence, visions, dreams, and hopes, so that future generations will know…we were here at this moment in time.
According to the Community Webs Program, there are now more than 150 members of this program. “These organizations have collectively archived over 100 terabytes of web-based community heritage materials, including more than 800 collections documenting the lives of local citizens, marginalized voices, and groups often absent from the historic record. The program and its participants have also created open educational resources relating to web archiving, digital preservation, community archiving, and collection development, explored new forms of local engagement and partnerships through public programming and crowdsourcing, and had their digital collections used by scholars and in computational research work.” (see About Community Webs)
We feel very fortunate to have been selected to participate in the Community Webs Program, and have been working to archive our own congregational website, and related websites of the Sisters of St. Joseph in Canada and the United States. It has been a learning curve, but we are so very grateful to the wonderful staff at Internet Archive who are so supportive, patient, and willing to guide us in this journey. While still a work in progress, you can see what we have accomplished so far by visiting our Community Webs site: Congregation of the Sisters of St. Joseph in Canada
Remembering Mother Martha von Bunning, 1824 – June 13, 1868
Sr. Ann Marshall, csj
In recognition of the 170 years since the Hamilton foundation, I was asked to reflect on why Mother Martha is so significant to the Hamilton sisters. Her story is poignant and instructive, and its meaning is still unfolding. Her story as a Sister of St. Joseph reflects the pascal mystery of death and resurrection. Martha followed in the footsteps of Jesus who died an apparent failure.
We first heard Martha’s story following Vatican 11 when Rome directed all religious congregations to revisit their founding charism. On hearing Martha’s story for the first time there was initial shock, surprise and a sense of embarrassment which gave way to anger/resentment. Remember this was an era of awakening for women containing new truths and insights. We symbolized our support of Martha by the removal of a large picture of the first Bishop of Hamilton, Bishop Farrell, which had been hanging prominently in the Mother House and gifted it to the Chancery Office where it now hangs in the Diocesan library named after him. A more appropriate home for His Grace.
Martha was born in Germany, emigrated to the USA, and entered the Congregation in 1845 at the age of 21. She was missioned from St. Louis Missouri to Toronto and from there to Hamilton in 1852. At 28 Martha was named the superior of the Hamilton community. Martha understood that love is expressed in service of the dear neighbour and readily accepted the challenge of caring for the typhus and cholera victims of arriving immigrants but at a cost of the lives of the sisters. Ten years into the foundation, in 1862, unjustly accused Martha was banished from the community by the Bishop. This resilient and humble woman made a second attempt at reconciliation in 1868 even though her health was failing but was again denied a meeting with the Bishop and made her way to Toronto, walking all the way. The archives are silent on this detail, however, she was warmly received by the Toronto community and died 9 days later.
I said earlier Martha’s story is instructive. She was courageous in responding to unmet needs, resilient in the face of adversity, humble and forgiving in the dark night of unjust condemnation, and uncompromising in living the charism of unity and reconciliation. It seems to me that Martha’s short life reflects our own congregation’s Chapter Statement: Moving with Love and embracing each moment of possibility as a graced path to Transformation.