Thirty-two attendees, including the SIG’s two Co-coordinators, joined the 2023 virtual annual meeting. Co-coordinators Amy Furness and Kathleen O’Reilly introduced themselves and provided the meeting agenda, as follows:

Agenda:

1. Introductions and Welcome and Vice-President/President-Elect welcome
2. Presentation
3. Discussion
4. Closing Remarks

Welcome from Co-Coordinators and Vice-President/President Elect

Amy Furness and Kathleen O’Reilly welcome the participants. Liv Valmestad introduced herself and offered her welcoming remarks and discussed her role at ARLIS/NA as Vice-President/President Elect.

Presentation: “The State of Artists’ Files in Canadian GLAMs and ARCs”

Sara Ellis and John Latour presented the history of their project and ongoing research.  The project unfolded from 2021-2023 and included an article in Art Documentation, a survey of 160+ organizations, a summary of results made available as an open-access report through Artexte, a poster presentation at ARLIS/NA Annual in Mexico, and a blog post available at the Artist File SIG website. Currently, John and Sara are working towards an academic article with literature review. 

Some key findings: 1. The number of Canadian artist file collections are larger than previously known, but barriers such as insufficient staffing, funding and lack of space exist to maintain and grow them.  2. There is a lack of standardization in terms of file management. 3. Most institutions who responded want to continue to develop their artist file collections. 

Sara and John identified that artist file collections and collecting in Canadian GLAMs and ARCs are at risk. Further research is required with the goal of bringing institutions together. Their scholarly article will begin with a formal literature review. However, they have found that there is a lack of literature within the Canadian context so they will expand their review to include research from outside Canada. The literature review will be followed by interviews with GLAMs to build case studies in the hopes of better understanding these institutions. 

A question and answer session followed with a lively discussion. Topics included: 1. the role of Artists in Canada from the National Gallery of Canada and how to expand its contributors. 2. whether John and Sara had success in identifying First Nations artists and their works. 3. What type of ephemera (paper or digital) were institutions most collecting. 

1. The National Gallery of Canada has formed a working group with plans to contact those institutions who have artist files but are not represented in Artists in Canada. They hope to include these institutions (if they wish to join) and thus expand the reach of Artist in Canada.
2. John and Sara confirmed they did ask about specialized collection areas, including Indigenous collections, women artists, etc. John noted that some institutions focus on local or regional artists who may not be represented elsewhere. 
3. John and Sara confirmed that collecting paper ephemera is still dominant but some institutions have begun to collect born-digital material.

General Discussion 

The discussion of copyright and digitization continued in the General Discussion. Some participants confirmed that their institutions have started to digitize existing files but acknowledge that lack of staff and funding play a big role in how much can be done. Others are focused on born-digital materials while also continuing to maintain and grow their physical paper files. Still others have a “scan on demand” service whereby they will scan a portion of an artist file for users. However, these scans do not necessarily represent the totality of the file so institutions are trying to decide whether to keep them for any future digitization plans. Copyright issues are a concern with most institutions only allowing for in-house use of digitized files. 

Closing Remarks

Amy and Kathleen closed the meeting by thanking our two speakers and thanking all the participants.