2022 Archivaria Awards

At the Association of Canadian Archivists 2022 Awards Ceremony in Vancouver, the following prizes were announced:

Kirsten Wright and Nicola Laurent, are awarded the W. Kaye Lamb Prize for their article “Safety, Collaboration, and Empowerment: Trauma-Informed Archival Practice,” which appears in Archivaria 91 (Spring/Summer 2021).

Named for Dr. William Kaye Lamb, Dominion Archivist of Canada (1948-1969) and founding National Librarian of Canada (1953-1967), this prize, established in 1983, is awarded annually to honour the author of the Archivaria article that, by its exceptional combination of research, reflection, and writing, most advances archival thinking in Canada. It is the senior award of the journal for the best article overall. The winner of the Lamb Prize is selected by the General Editor, with the assistance of the members of the Archivaria Editorial Board.

The citation reads:

In this important article, Kirsten Wright and Nicola Laurent call on archivists to reflect on the ways in which the traumatic impacts of archives (both the records and the institutions) can be identified and dealt with. Building on deep research into trauma-informed frameworks and years of thoughtful conversations on trauma-informed archival practice, the authors lay out precisely where and why a trauma-informed approach is necessary, and offer detailed advice on how this approach can be enacted in archival contexts in order to mitigate trauma. Their theoretical and practical model is incredibly beneficial to working archivists and archival thinkers, as it delineates a clear path forward for this much needed shift in our professional and scholarly spaces.

Harrison Apple is awarded the Hugh A. Taylor Prize for their article “‘I Can’t Wait for You to Die’: A Community Archives Critique,” which appeared in Archivaria 92 (Fall 2021).

The winner of the Taylor prize is chosen by the General Editor and a professor of Archival Studies (selected by the General Editor), who decide the winner by consensus. This year that role was filled by Karen Suurtamm from the University of Toronto.

The citation reads:

In “‘I Can’t Wait for you to Die’: A Community Archives Critique,” Harrison Apple beautifully demonstrates how care for communities, their members, and their stories requires a re-orientation of underlying assumptions in archival practice. This “Counterpoint” article makes significant interventions, at a critical moment in archival history - when the archival profession is facing the absences and erasures in their holdings and working to build more inclusive collections. Drawing on a wide range of perspectives from multidisciplinary literature, including archival studies and critical theory, read alongside their own engagement with community archival praxis, Apple’s provocative and generative article is a call to all archivists, working across all sectors, to recognize the role of archival refusals in the building of trust, and to ultimately relinquish their hold on collection and custodianship as the archival imperative.

Congratulations to all the winners!