About the Archive
Our Mission: Work and advocate for a U of A where everyone has access to food and food education.
Our Vision: We believe students should hunger for knowledge, not food.
Our Archive Values:
Access and Use Values
The Campus Food Bank Archive aims to provide access to the widest possible array of materials, records and information for public use. The archive is being developed using a decolonial, decentered and feminist archival practice, while ensuring items are preserved in a manner that promotes preservation, access and service.
Diversity and Inclusion Values
The records from this community-based archive documents the food security needs of intersectional, underrepresented and marginalized individuals who are most disproportionately affected within the University of Alberta community.
Responsible Stewardship and Sustainability Values
The Campus Food Bank values transparency and recognition of their own limitations when it comes to donor relations and artifact care. Archives are intertwined with identity, history, and belonging, but there is an unequal power dynamic to these experiences (Ghaddar & Caswell, 2019). The Campus Food Bank aims to reduce the unbalanced, gatekeeping approach to archival work through collaboration.
Accuracy and Advocacy Values
By working with the understanding that access to these historical documents and primary sources is a privilege (Lar-Son, 2020), it is an important responsibility to ensure that the digital archive is an accurate representation for the events and historical experiences of the organization. The Campus Food Bank Archive will support the work of the organization by making available its collection of historical records which demonstrate the critical impact the food bank has had serving the community.
Social Responsibility and Accountability Values
The Campus Food Bank Archive was created with social responsibility and accountability as central values which entail a continuing examination and evaluation of the existing power structures affecting both internal and external functions, while centering relationships as fundamental to archival work (Arnold, 2019).
References:
Arnold, H. (2019). Practicing care: Constructing social responsibility through feminist care ethics. In C. Weideman & M.A. Caldera (Eds.), Archival values: Essays in honor of Mark A. Green. Society of American Archivists and Association of Canadian Archivists.
Ghaddar & Caswell (2019). "To go beyond": Towards a decolonial archival praxis. Archival Science, 19, 71-85. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10502-019-09311-1
Lar-Son, K. (2020). Data as relation: Indigenous data sovereignty and ethic of care [Video]. Youtube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QGYse9iDPWI
