Working From Home

County Archivist Liz Dommasch provides updates on the projects archives staff have completed while working from home and discusses some of the challenges of running an archives remotely. 

By Liz Dommasch, County Archivist

On March 16, 2020 the Oxford County Archives was told to close the Archives to the public, as cases of COVID-19 began to rise and the Province mandated an extended March Break for students. A week later, staff were notified they were to work from home for the foreseeable future. Several months later, staff continue to work from home and may continue to do so for some time, as cases are still being reported and a fear of a second wave of the virus is on everyone’s minds. We certainly miss the archives and miss interacting with our patrons on a daily basis. We hope that this blog will help provide an insight into what archives staff has been doing, will provide some interesting local facts and history for you, and will help build that interaction with our patrons we’ve sorely been missing.

So what’s it like to operate an archives from your kitchen or living room? There’s definitely been some highs and some lows over the last few months. Initially there was the fear of: is this even feasible? We certainly couldn’t empty the vault and take everything home with us. Staff had to be selective with the physical projects they chose to work on and have been slipping into the archives periodically to pick up new materials and return materials that are no longer needed. Archives staff are also popping into the building to ensure our vault temperature and humidity levels are still optimal and have been answering reference questions (yes, we are accessible by email!), though some times our responses may take a bit of time.

My "work from home station"

There were also new factors to dealing with working from home, including finding an ideal work space, children, pets (dog drool and cat hair are not archivists’ ideal environmental factors!), and the feelings of isolation from not physically working with other staff, and the public. One of the biggest disappointments for staff is that we are not able to work with our volunteers or our co-op student, and hopefully, moving forward, we can find ways that we can still work together remotely until the archives opens again.

All our programming and outreach activities had to be put on hold, which included our Memories from the Vault programme that is held at the Woodingford Lodges and other long term care facilities in the county. Other workshops such as our “Archiving from Home” for Oxford Ancestors had to be cancelled and our appearances at the Ingersoll and Tillsonburg Libraries’ Heritage Fairs obviously couldn’t happen. As the world starts to change and adapt to the new way of doing things, archives staff are also going to have to change and adapt the way we offer our programmes and services to the public. Online and virtual programming may become a new norm moving forward.

However, like many now faced with the challenges of working from home, we have adapted. Staff are able to communicate on a daily basis through email, phone calls and text messages and have been able to tap into our creative sides in order to develop new innovative ways to stay connected with the community we serve. In the last few months we’ve taken cues from many other archives, libraries, museums and galleries that are in a similar situation and we have been able to create new online activities, such as    puzzles and activity sheets; a new online exhibit entitled Spanish Flu: Food for Thought; and have partnered with the Woodstock Museum to collect community stories and archival records during these historic times.

Through all of this, we hope that the public is staying healthy and staying safe and we hope to eventually see everyone back at the Archives soon!