A group of retired faculty and alumni of Dalhousie's Faculty of Dentistry are preserving history, one scan at a time.
The archives project began when many boxes of old photos, negatives, and photo CDs had to be moved from one area of the Dentistry Building to another to prepare for construction of a new biomaterials lab.
Retired faculty member Dr. Doug Chaytor saw the stash of materials as a historical treasure trove worthy of preserving and sharing, with photos spanning decades of Dentistry events and happenings. Together with Kate MacDonald and Glenda Butt, former dental hygiene colleagues, they started to label the photos in 2017 and identify the people in them. COVID-19 interrupted their work, but in early 2022 they regrouped and others started to join the working group.
What began as a small-scale project has since evolved into a partnership with Dalhousie's records management and archives teams, who stepped up to help the group figure out a way to scan and securely store the materials.
"The group was working on its own without Dal support initially," says Courtney Bayne, Dal's records manager. "When they heard about the new records management service, they had already captured a lot of the history. I helped them to break the project into phases."
In addition to preserving the Faculty of Dentistry's past and connecting it to the present, the archives work could encourage other Faculties and departments at Dal to embark on similar projects.
Explore the results of the project so far: Faculty of Dentistry archives
Working group member Cara Tax working with photos.
A model for preservation
So far, about 5,800 images, 64 publications, and 80 individual print items have been scanned as part of the project.
The physical copies of the records are preserved for long-term storage and the uncompressed digital records and their metadata are stored. Smaller scanned versions are made accessible via the Dalhousie Archives catalogue.
With Dentistry Alumni Committee support, funding was provided to hire Dal Dentistry student Bronwen Barter, to help with this work. She scanned and recorded images in the Dal archives offices for two summers. Several students from community colleges also gained work experience this way.
Digital asset technician Phil Laugher trained both Barter and the interns in scanning, naming conventions, and metadata standards so that all the vital information was recorded prior to the materials being sent to the Dal archives for preservation.
Barter (DDS’26) says that she loves "meticulous things." That explains why she decided to study dentistry – and why the archive project appealed to her. Not only was it a change from the summer lab jobs she normally had, it provided an opportunity to get to know Dal, where both of her parents had also studied dentistry. She says the work was "very satisfying."
Materials to be identified and labelled.
Working group members also benefit from their involvement. All retirees from the Faculty, they enjoy Monday morning sessions drinking coffee, eating cookies,and reminiscing while they go about their task of identifying photos. They say it makes them feel that they’re helping the Faculty. It’s also a great way to bond and to "feel like family."
"The working group is doing an amazing job of preserving our history," says Dr. Ben Davis, dean of the Faculty. "By working with the university records management office, all our photos, publications, and other records are now safely preserved and accessible to internal and external audiences who want to have access to them. We’re very grateful to the work of Doug Chaytor and his team. Judging by the laughing we hear, they’re clearly having fun, too."