The Archives Association of Ontario (AAO) is pleased to announce its Call for Papers for the 2020 Annual Conference to be held 13-15 May in Thunder Bay, Ontario.

 Building Bridges, Connecting Communities

New partnerships, strategic alliances, and informal connections can play important roles in enabling archivists and their programs to reach new users, increase diversity in collections, build stronger, more inclusive senses of community, and to engage in new methods of outreach. Collaboration also provides the means to mitigate budget limitations and helps to avoid the isolation that can leave programs susceptible to cuts or potential downsizing. There are countless instances of AAO members pursuing new forms of collaboration and innovative partnerships, and we want to hear about them.

The 2020 Program Committee invites proposals for presentations that will speak to how partnerships have been fostered and the impact of these connections on the archives and their partners, as well as opportunities for future initiatives. Topics could include:

• Community partnerships to support acquisition, storage, stewardship, preservation, and accessibility of archival material

• New, inclusive methods of collecting or preserving memory

• Collaborative approaches to resource description and discoverability

• New engagement strategies with donor communities

• User-focused digitization projects

• Engagement with partners outside of the archival profession

• The consolidation of archives, special collections, and records management programs as a means of promoting or highlighting services

Submissions of proposals for entire sessions or individual papers are invited.

Sessions may take the form of:

• Traditional session (two or three presentations of approximately 20 minutes per speaker with questions to follow as time allows)

• Discussion panel (brief presentations of approximately 10 to 15 minutes per speaker with discussion to follow)

• Roundtables or debates (presentations of 5 to 7 minutes with open discussion between speakers)

Proposals for a session or an individual paper should include an abstract of up to 250 words and a biographical note of no more than 100 words for each speaker.

Proposals should be sent to the AAO Office at aao@aao-archivists.ca

Individual papers should use the subject line format: AAO 2020 Conference Proposal_[last name, first name]

Proposals for a session should select a “point person” and use the subject line format: AAO 2019 Conference Proposal_PANEL-[title]-[last name, first name]

The deadline to submit proposals is Sunday, 26 January 2020.

Depending on student interest, the 2020 Annual Conference will include a session devoted to student papers and possibly a poster session. A separate call for student submissions will be issued early 2020.

On behalf of the 2020 Program Committee.