The Association of Canadian Archivists (ACA) hosted their 50th anniversary conference from June 9th to 12th, 2025. The conference was held at Carleton University in Ottawa, Ontario, and a number of UBC School of Information students and faculty traveled to Ottawa to attend.
Amongst those from UBC School of Information who attended the conference were Dr. Alexander Ross, Kaila Fewster (MASLIS), and Dr. Richard Arias-Hernández, who ran a workshop on the first day of the conference. The workshop, titled “Indigenous and Accountable AI for the Archival Professions,” explored how Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) can be incorporated into archivists’ workflows.
Dr. Arias-Hernández told us how the workshop specifically focused on AI- and ML-use that respects and upholds Indigenous data sovereignty and governance principles: “Participants discussed how archivists can critically evaluate and incorporate new technologies like AI/ML into their work while still upholding their responsibilities as stewards of cultural memory and following the proper Indigenous protocols. In collaborative conversations, we put together a series of recommendations and proposed pragmatic ways of establishing accountability in uses of AI on Indigenous records/archives.”
Photo provided by Richard Arias-Hernández.
Grace Park and Lily Liu (MASLIS) also attended the conference, and presented a reflective summary of their exhibition at UBC Library, “Within the Gaps: Intracommunity Voices in Chinese Canadian and Korean Canadian Records.” For Grace and Lily, attending the ACA Conference was “an exciting opportunity to forefront a dialogue at the national stage about Asian Canadian records based in community archiving.” Their presentation was part of a session on community archives, and Grace and Lily noted how participating in the session gave them new insights into the field: “It was interesting to see common threads emerge in the presentation session as a whole: the complexity and ‘messiness’ that exist within a given community; the discussion of gaps in records and memory; the personal, emotionally-laden nature of community-based archival work. We are grateful to have met people guided by similar motivations as us and enjoyed learning about all of the different projects in the session.”
Photo provided by Grace Park.
Photo provided by Grace Park.
Photo provided by Grace Park.
Congratulations to Dr. Alexander Ross, Kaila Fewster, Dr. Richard Arias-Hernández, Grace Park, Lily Liu, and the many other UBC School of Information faculty and students who attended the conference.
