I am writing this post from the Qantas lounge at Melbourne airport, in the couple of hours before I board a plane to Los Angeles. I’m flying from Los Angeles to Seattle, then Seattle to Victoria, Canada.

The reason for my trip is the 39th Annual Conference of the Association of Canadian Archivists, “Archivatopia”: http://archivists.ca/content/annual-conference. After a couple of days settling in, I am attending a workshop on Tuesday looking at digital preservation and holdings management using Archivematica and AtoM. Then the conference kicks off with a reception on Wednesday evening. I am also presenting, as part of a session on Friday afternoon titled “Access, Action, Activism, Advocacy and Autonomy. Australian Archives Answer the Challenge“.

Given the work I have been involved in recently, I am particularly interested in finding out more about the Canadian archival perspective on British child migrant records and reparation, and investigations into residential schools and Aboriginal archives. The timing is appropriate. Yesterday, archives and records hit the news in Canada with The Star reporting the chief adjudicator of the residential schools claims process is calling for the destruction of all records related to the process.

As some readers will know, these concerns overlap with key aspects of my own work. I have been involved in various projects related to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in Australia; and I am the Lead Archivist on the national Find & Connect web resource project, a three year (to date) effort to document the history of out-of-home ‘care’ in Australia from colonial times to the present, and to identify all the records and archival collections associated with this history. The web resource has become an invaluable tool for Forgotten Australians and Former Child Migrants (the approximately 500,000 people who were in institutional care as children in the twentieth century), as well as for support services, advocacy groups, and enquiries such as the current Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse.

I am exceedingly lucky being able to travel for work, and always find it valuable meeting other archivists around Australia and overseas. And, though I have also attended great conferences on libraries, digital humanities, research data management, knowledge management and more, there is something special about archival conferences.

So, over the next eight days or so, I will be tweeting and blogging from Victoria, Canada and the ACA conference. As we head into the last stretch of #blogjune, there should be plenty to talk about.