December 2009 Update

Season’s Greetings

On behalf of Derek Watts and the rest of the ITCMA committee and project staff – happy holidays to all of the Passage participants. We hope that you have a wonderful and relaxing holiday season, and look forward to working with you in 2010.

New Year, Old Office

For those who haven’t heard, Karin is officially back in the ANSM office on Marginal Road in Halifax. This means that you can track Karin down even more easily. She can be reached at the main ANSM line or toll-free number, her cell, email, and through Skype.

Also, we want to remind anyone who has a link to the old FNSH website that this should be updated to the new ANSM website. This is not something that we can do for you, so please get your webmaster to update the information.

The ANSM office will be closed from December 19^th until January 4^th.

Renewal Contracts

This year’s contracts have been sent out, so keep an eye out for them in your mail. Please sign & return these with payment to ANSM as soon as possible, and note that this year’s deadline for returning the contracts is January 31^st.

CHIN Enrichment Project

The deadline for this year’s CHIN project is January 31^st, so if you haven’t finished adding the enriched information & images to your database and uploaded to Artefacts Canada, now is the time to do it. This year 26 sites are participating, which means that we will have over 500 newly enriched records with images on Artefacts Canada before February. Let us know if you need help fulfilling the funding obligations and getting your records online. We are here to help.

Equipment Purchase

As you all know, we have been working on a bulk purchase of several small pieces of equipment for participant sites. Thank you to everyone who gave us other equipment suggestions as well, since that helps us determine and better meet your needs. Our order has been placed, which means we will be looking at ways to facilitate delivery & introduction of the equipment. Stay tuned in the New Year for more details.

Artefacts Canada Tally

With our CHIN Enrichment Project deadline fast-approaching, we are now seeing enriched records with images being uploaded to Artefacts Canada. 12,314 new records have been uploaded so far this month, giving Passage sites a grand total of 145,104 records on Artefacts Canada.

Here are the new regional stats:

Southwest: 64,736

Central: 34,333

Northeast: 24,901

Cape Breton: 21,134

Congratulations to the Southwest Region for uploading the most records this month. Honourable mentions go to Fort Point Museum and Nova Scotia Sports Hall of Fame, two new Passage sites who together have almost 6,000 records online.

Blog Polls

This year Karin has asked Santa for one thing – that all the Passage sites will vote in the Loan Management poll at the bottom of the page. Please help make her wish come true.

Message from PSC Chair Derek Watts

Message from Derek Watts, Chair Passage Steering Committee and Passage Project Administrator , Wolfville Historical Society.

1 December 2009

Well, here we are at the end of the year for which Wolfville Historical Society successfully applied for the SDI Passage grant, and during which it administered and delivered the Passage Project to you, the partners. In the first few months of the year, your steering committee reached an agreement with the ANSM board and the story concerning that was circulated to you all at the time. The principle and most important outcome of the agreement for the partners was that Passage earnings (surplus of income over expense) accumulated during the previous years was acknowledged in its full amount by ANSM, and identified and secured in segregated accounts (Passage Support Funds), for use only for benefit of the project. Another part of the agreement was the creation of a Collections Management Advisory Committee (CMAC) by the board. The principle and most important part of this committee's work was to prepare the ground for the Passage's re-establishment as a service project of ANSM. A new committee, replacing the Passage Steering Committee, with a broader mandate was recommended by CMAC. Terms of Reference for this committee, called the Information Technology and Collections Management Advisory Committee, together with Terms of Reference for the Collections Co-ordinator, were written and adopted by the ANSM board on November 6^th and the CMAC was dissolved. Accordingly, PSC dissolved itself on 27 November. Members of the PSC will continue as members of the ITCMA (as it will be referred to), together with additional members as time goes on. I have offered to be chair of this committee for the coming year.

In August, Anita Price (who must be well known to you all), joined ANSM as Managing Director. As the original Passage visionary, she collaborated with the CMAC in their final work and that vision for Passage has now been clearly spelled out in the Terms of Reference referred to. With PSC, she collaborated in the preparation of the SDI application for 2009/2010. That application was made by ANSM this time, and it was approved by the Minister of Tourism, Culture & Heritage on November 17^th.

This year was a very busy one for the PSC, stressful for some, but one of considerable accomplishment. Karin's work and service was outstanding and produced a very good result. Altogether a great foundation has been laid down for important initiatives in 2010 which will be come clear to you when the year's work plan has been developed in detail.