Governance and Recordkeeping, May 2026

The GVT Overview is a foundational document that explains how to leverage Library and Archives Canada’s Generic Valuation Tools (GVTs) to support government recordkeeping. The new Guidelines on Documented Disposition of Records provide advice to departmental officials on establishing and implementing disposition processes for all records. Work continues on the GVT renewal process, and the Legal Services GVT has been updated. This GVT helps Government of Canada institutions identify and manage records related to legal activities, such as providing legal advice, drafting legislation, and supporting litigation.

LAC plays a supporting but important role, mainly tied to transparency, access to information, and preservation of government records. Open government depends on well-managed archives, which is LAC’s core mandate. While LAC isn’t the policy lead for the Open Government Plan, it provides critical support as Canada’s national archives. By preserving records, improving access, and digitizing information, LAC enables the transparency, accountability, and public participation that the plan is built on.

The plan sets out LAC’s priorities, strategies, and planned resources for the 2026–2027 fiscal year and the following two years. It builds on LAC’s Vision 2030 and places users at the centre of its programs and services.

The evaluation assessed how well LAC was providing online access to its collections and services as part of its Public Services Program, looking at progress toward goals, user experience, coordination within the institution, and resource use.

LAC is pleased to announce the successful completion of the Day Schools Project, a mass digitization and description initiative involving records relating to Federal Indian Day Schools and their legacy. LAC also developed a suite of research tools to help Survivors, their families, and researchers locate documents related to day schools. Although the project has concluded, its legacy lives on through the 5.7 million pages now available through Collection search.

Download the booklet: Documents of a Colonial System : Day Schools Records at Library and Archives Canada.

The dataset on the Government of Canada’s Open Data Portal is part of the Government of Canada AI Register, which publicly lists how federal departments are using or testing artificial intelligence systems. The register is intended to increase transparency and accountability by documenting AI projects used across government programs and services.

The Canadian Museum of History in Gatineau is experimenting with artificial intelligence tools to improve how visitors interact with exhibits and historical objects. The museum has launched a pilot AI chatbot called MUSEO, designed to answer questions and provide explanations about artifacts in exhibitions.

A panel featuring speakers from organizations including Black History Manitoba and the Black Canadian Experience Centre discussed efforts to collect, preserve, and share Black cultural heritage. The goal is to fill gaps in Canada’s documentary heritage and make Black histories more visible and accessible to researchers and the public.

The Documentary Heritage Communities Program, a funding program run by LAC, has been permanently discontinued due to federal budget cuts. The Association’s board is protesting the decision and issued a “call to action” encouraging archivists, researchers, and supporters to contact their MPs and advocate for restoring the program.

The PDF is a draft routine information schedule from the Government of British Columbia’s records management framework. It proposes how long various types of routine government records should be kept before being destroyed. It was released for public consultation as part of updating information schedules that govern recordkeeping practices.

The Canadian federal government is exploring how to modernize privacy law for a data-driven world, moving from a narrow, now outdated framework to one that protects rights more robustly, enables smarter government use of data, reflects modern realities like digital services, and respects Indigenous data sovereignty.

The Haitian government has formally put forward the historical archives of Le Nouvelliste for consideration to be added to UNESCO’s Memory of the World Register, aiming to secure international recognition and protection for this important documentary collection.

SEDA (Standard d’échange de données pour l’archivage) is a standardized format that enables the secure exchange, transfer, and long-term preservation of digital archives between institutions. The piece celebrates SEDA as a foundational standard in digital archiving, emphasizing its long-term role in enabling reliable, interoperable, and sustainable preservation of digital records in France.

The release of files by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade (MFAT) adds to earlier declassification efforts involving hundreds more files and is intended to support research, historical understanding, and public accountability by opening records that were previously restricted. The release shows how governments use recordkeeping systems to enable accountability over time.

The plan is built around five strategic outcomes: a future-ready national archive; enriched lives and informed debate; upholding democratic rights; empowered and skilled people; long-term organizational sustainability. It focuses on preserving Scotland’s official records and statistics, making them accessible, and supporting democratic processes by providing trusted information about Scotland’s people and history.

The page explains a project to develop “generally recognized standards” for handling personal data in archives, specifically for “archiving in the public interest.” These standards are being created in response to new UK data protection legislation.

The article demonstrates a case of systemic failures in recordkeeping: inaccurate, manipulated, inaccessible, and poorly governed records enabled harm and now complicate justice. It shows that good information management is essential not just for efficiency but for human rights, accountability, and truth.

International Archives Week 2026: Archives for Justice—Rights, Memory & Futures

Archives Management—Digital Governance and Smart Services

Efficiency by Design: Stories of Process Management in Libraries and Archives

IS&T Archiving 2026

Archives*Records 2026

ARA Annual Conference 2026 (Archives & Records Association UK & Ireland)

ICA/SUV 2026 Annual International Conference and Fifth Workshop on Scientific Archives

Interrogating the archive: First Nations perspectives

ARMA InfoCon 2026

In Quebec, public bodies must obtain authorization from Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec before destroying original inactive documents after digitization. The guidelines are mainly intended for public organizations but can be used by any group undertaking digitization projects. They help identify which documents should be kept in their original form and build on existing archival evaluation frameworks, also drawing on international practices.

The International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions has updated and finalized a revised set of Guidelines for Audiovisual Resources in Libraries and Other Institutions. The revised guidelines provide internationally accepted recommendations on managing audiovisual and multimedia materials, including standards for collection development, description, access, preservation, equipment, and services across diverse library and cultural heritage institutions.

Three guidebooks have been developed through a project called “Beyond Personal Data” to help address the challenges of working with data that cannot be easily shared. The guidebooks offer practical guidance on when and how sensitive or “hard to share” data can be shared responsibly, balancing openness with ethical responsibility.

The tool helps librarians and institutions decide whether and how to adopt AI in ways that align with their values. Libraries are increasingly experimenting with AI but need guidance to avoid harm and ensure responsible use. This tool positions libraries as leaders in thoughtful, ethical tech adoption, rather than just rapid adopters.

Preservica will provide a secure, cloud-based platform to store, manage, and preserve the library’s vast and growing digital collections (including e-books, websites, audio, journals, and digitized heritage materials). The system is designed to handle petabyte-scale data and ensure long-term accessibility and integrity of digital content for future generations.

Its main purpose is to describe shared, interoperable features across the Data Document Initiative suite of standards for documenting data—especially metadata for social, behavioural, and economic data and data integration across domains. It provides common terminology, structures, and models (e.g., for variables, value domains, and life cycle stages) that support technical interoperability, meaning that different systems and tools can understand and exchange data documentation consistently.

The Ontario Council of University Libraries (OCUL) update highlights significant progress across its AI initiative. This includes major technical advances in key pilot projects, such as improved large-scale OCR and metadata generation for government documents and a fully functional, high-accuracy audio-to-text transcription pipeline, alongside continued development of AI chatbots and the launch of a new accessibility-focused project.

The government has launched the Gyan Bharatam Mission, which uses modern technology to digitize manuscripts and preserve them using scientific methods (e.g., high-quality scanning, conservation techniques). The initiative reflects a national effort to use digital technology to rescue, preserve, and share India’s historical knowledge, ensuring that fragile and often neglected manuscripts are not lost.

The article highlights a presentation about 25 years of web archiving at the Library of Congress, celebrating how the program has grown from a small pilot into a significant initiative to preserve web history and sharing resources for deeper insight.

This issue brings together a range of editorial pieces, essays, research articles, and creative contributions that explore how broadcast archives can be used and reimagined beyond standard archival research. Contributions come from scholars, archivists, and media practitioners.

The article explores how artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning are reshaping digital history research by offering powerful, accessible tools for historians and heritage professionals. It argues that AI techniques—such as automated text analysis, pattern recognition, and data mining—can enable new kinds of historical inquiry, including processing large archival corpora, uncovering patterns not visible through traditional methods, and supporting cost effective research workflows.

The article examines how Open Access (OA), which has transformed academic publishing, can be applied to museum research, using the Science Museum Group as a case study. Ultimately, OA can help museums and the wider GLAM sector to become more open, transparent, and accessible, but it also requires rethinking research, infrastructure, and how knowledge is defined and shared.

The article from the Australian Academy of the Humanities argues that galleries, libraries, archives, and museums (GLAM institutions) play a crucial role in helping communities resist misinformation and build resilience in the digital age. GLAM institutions are trusted sources of knowledge and culture, and they help people understand, question, and contextualize information, which is essential for countering misinformation.

This article is a podcast-based discussion with digital humanities scholar Kate Simpson, focusing on how digital heritage is shaped by colonial histories and power structures. The bottom line? Digital heritage is not neutral; it can either reproduce colonial power structures or help decolonize knowledge, depending on who controls the tools, data, and narratives.

Information governance fails when it focuses only on control and ignores how people actually use information. “Harmony” fixes this by combining governance, usability, and AI, turning records from static archives into active, trusted assets for decision-making.

Organizations must move from treating records as passive archives to active, AI-enabled assets. By combining strong governance with real-time usability, they can unlock faster insights, better decisions, and greater trust in their information.

The episode discusses archives as a shared space where both women and men have left their mark, while emphasizing that women’s contributions have often been overlooked. It proposes replacing the term “heritage” with “cultural inheritance” to better highlight marginalized legacies, including women’s heritage (matrimoine) and queer heritage—concepts aimed at making these histories more visible.

The book argues that the modern fight against disinformation has itself become a tool for suppressing legitimate dissent. It claims that systems originally built to protect society, especially after 9/11, have evolved into a powerful “information state” where governments and tech companies collaborate to monitor, influence, and control public opinion.

The book explains that people have stopped visiting departmental archives in person, which is a mistake because only about 2–3% of the documents are available online. These archives hold essential historical records such as civil registers, parish records, censuses, and notarial documents useful for historians and genealogy research. While many basic records are now accessible online, more detailed materials needed to reconstruct ancestors’ lives are harder to find and usually require on-site research.

The book is designed to help librarians write grant proposals and manage collaboration among diverse partners. It explains that libraries rely on grants to expand services and reach more communities, but many librarians lack formal training in grant writing and often have limited institutional support due to budget cuts. As a result, they must take on complex responsibilities like coordinating teams and securing external funding on their own.

A 2024 roundtable summarizes two years of collaboration. It presents a new, more organized inventory of the archives (covering 1914–1940) and includes case studies from six researchers. Their work explores foreign-language press (Arabic, Spanish, Greek, Italian, Polish, and Portuguese) in French contexts and offers multiple perspectives on how these archives can be used. It focuses on archival records related to the monitoring of the press during France’s Third Republic, especially documents that were once seized and later returned by Russia.

The book offers a comprehensive guide to the Marrakesh Treaty and its connection to copyright and disability law. It explains how copyright restrictions have contributed to a “global book famine,” limiting access to written works for people with disabilities. It examines the philosophical foundations of copyright through an inclusivity lens and explores how different models of disability influence national policies.

A new industry standard has been released to guide how organizations migrate records, data, and information between systems. The standard provides requirements, specifications, and practical guidance to ensure migrations are consistent, secure, and well governed, rather than purely technical exercises.

Submitted by: RIMPA Global (The Records and Information Management Practitioners Alliance [RIMPA] is the longest-serving peak body for industry practitioners in the southern hemisphere.)