Demographic

Age: 46

Gender identity: Male

Race: Caucasian

Indigenous: No

Class: Middle

Other identity (e.g. linguistic, religious): N/A

Education: PhD

Language: English

Personal responsibilities: None

Location: Relationship to Lower Mainland (from here, were from here, from elsewhere) Lives in New Westminster

Widgets: Tools & Platforms

• Crowdsourcing – Text Thresher
• Curation – Ponga, HistoryPin
• IIIF – Mirador

Brief Biography

Steve Smith is university history professor teaching a third year labour history course. He relies on archival documents for his own research projects. He is a scholar of local labour history and is engaged with individuals active in local social and labour movements. He is passionate about giving his students practical research skills and experience, and getting them to engage with archival material in new and exciting ways. He is interested in examining records from new points of view and in making them more accessible for learning. He likes to partner with archival staff who have a deeper understanding of available archival material and archival theory and practice.

Character description

Steve is an enthusiastic archives champion. He likes to team up with archival staff to learn from their knowledge and expertise in locating relevant holdings and to bring the excitement of archival discovery and research to his students. He is interested in looking at documents from new perspectives and in having his students engage with them in new and interesting ways.

Interest in archives & Life experience

Why interested in archives: Steve grew up in New Westminster and received his PhD. from SFU. He teaches Labour History at a university and he conducts academic research on the history of labour and social movements in BC. He is teaching on these subjects in his third-year history course, and he wants to incorporate archival documents and research into his syllabus. Students will have to complete an assignment using archival records.

Community affiliations: Steve has connections to the local labour movement and social activists. He is a member of the BC Historical Federation and the Vancouver Historical Society

Represented in archives: No

Professional affiliations: His university’s Department of History

Access needs and mobility: None

Motivations

Why: Steve wants his students to gain archival research experience and skills and to learn and interpret history from original documents.

Frustrations

Barriers: A fairly large class size and limited time in syllabus makes it difficult to get everyone into the archives to use physical material, so they will mainly navigate the archival material online. Some students have better technical and research skills then others and they have little to no knowledge of archival systems. Steve is not completely sure how to find exactly what he needs online.

Info and Tech Access & Experience

Hardware: Uses a Mac computer and laptop, iPhone

Software: Basic software, eg. MS Office, Adobe

Network connectivity: Good connectivity through work and home internet

Experience with archival tools: Steve frequently conducts archival research for his academic articles and forthcoming book. He is very familiar with online tools and AtoM databases used by academic and community archives but using them to their full potential is not always intuitive to him

Experience with archival frameworks: Some experience

Comfort with learning technology: Very comfortable

Goals

What do they want to do: Steve wants a curated selection of archival documents and audiovisual material that his students can easily access and use in their assignments.

What relationship do they want to the archives: Steve would like a close working relationship with archival staff and for staff to act as intermediaries to the material. He will rely on staff for student orientation and instruction in archival research, and to suggest material that is appropriate.