Building Cohesion and Community across the Generations: An Evening of Conversation for Archivists & Allied Professionals

Earlier this month the AMA, ACA, and ACA Student Chapter organized an evening during which entry-level and underemployed archivists were brought together in conversation with experienced archivists and allied professionals to discuss the building of meaningful careers. We were pleased to hear from Karen Meelker, Carole Boily and Carol Garnham as they shared perspectives, stories, and insights gained through their careers in the areas of access and privacy, archival consultancy, and records management.

Karen Meelker is the Access and Privacy Officer/Coordinator at the University of Manitoba’s Access and Privacy Office, part of the Office of Fair Practices and Legal Affairs. Karen earned her Bachelor of Science Honours degree from Brandon University, and is a distinguished graduate of the University of Alberta’s Information Access and Protection of Privacy Program, and was awarded the Privasoft award for superior academic achievement in the program. Prior to joining the University in 2011, Karen worked as a Senior Policy Analyst specializing in access to information issues for the Information and Privacy Policy Secretariat for the Government of Manitoba.

Carol Garnham is a board director for the Winnipeg Chapter of ARMA International. She is the Regional Information and Communication Technologies Lead for Southern Health-Santé Sud and is currently working on a regional Information Reproduction and Transmission Project. In her previous role as Regional Internal Portal Service Manager with the health authority, she focused on provisioning an Internal Portal Service, Regional Policy program, and Web Conferencing to the region. Carol holds a professional designation as a Certified Records Manager.

Carol brings over 25 years of experience in initiating and developing information governance frameworks including guides, procedures and other tools to enhance training, development and usability in the areas of enterprise content management, process improvement, and collaboration. She has been referred to as “before her time” more than once in terms of the initiatives undertaken to position her employer to implement methods to manage intellectual property, translate knowledge and build capacity, occasionally resulting in some visible bumps and bruises along the way.

Carole Boily is an archival consultant here in Winnipeg. Carole began working in Archives at the St. Boniface Historical Society in the early 1980’s quite by accident. However this “accidental archivist” has been working with, learning about, and enjoying archives ever since.