In 2017, the Archives of Ontario conducted a public Customer Service survey to evaluate overall customer satisfaction and to identify key factors currently influencing customer experience at the Archives.
Over 500 people graciously completed the survey. Thank you to everyone for your valued feedback!
Click on the tabs below for more information about the survey results and what we have done to enhance customer experience.
Overall, customer satisfaction ranked very high with 85% of respondents satisfied with the service provided by the Archives of Ontario. Your input also identified the following three areas as opportunities for improvement in our services:
Over the last year, the Archives developed a three-year Customer Experience Strategy to address these areas. The goals of the strategy are to enhance:
On a yearly basis, we aimed at sharing our progress on how we are reaching our goals to enhance your experience with and access to the Archives of Ontario!
Since developing our Customer Experience Strategy:
We also acquired and processed the following collections now available through the Archives’ Reading Room:
We first want to thank you for your continued support and interest in the Archives as we navigate the current COVID-19 situation. In order to keep our clients and staff safe we have temporarily closed the doors to our in-person services and transitioned to providing more access and services online.
Over the last year, we have worked as an organization to find creative ways to facilitate access to more digital records and increase our online presence.
Some of the projects we focussed on include:
We expanded our partnership with FamilySearch International to make over 4 million of our microfilmed archival records available online, free of charge, on the FamilySearch website.
Click here for more information about our digitized microfilmed collections.
We initiated a GLAM Wiki project to enhance our presence across Wikimedia platforms and to make our records more widely available.
So far, we uploaded 2,009 high-resolution TIFF files from 7 separate collections, including the Alvin D. McCurdy fonds, the War posters collection and the Elizabeth Simcoe sketches.
We enhanced 250 BIBLiON catalogue records with links to digital copies of originals held in the Library collection.
Click here to access the BIBLiON Library catalogue.
With more people using video conferencing to connect during COVID-19, we created a new Flickr album containing free, high-resolution downloadable images from our collections.
To access more of our free digital images on Flickr, click here for the Archives’ Flickr account.
To support learning in any setting and respond to parents’ and teachers’ pressing need for free, curriculum-linked online resources, we created primary source flashcards using images and materials from our collections to help young students learn the letters of the alphabet, new vocabulary, and diverse stories from Ontario’s past.
We launched the FOI Digital Delivery initiative to support the secured digital delivery of records in response to Archives’ Freedom of Information (FOI) requests.
Researchers can also now submit FOI requests for restricted archival records and the $5.00 application fee online.
For more information, click here to consult Customer Service Guide 109.
We recently entered into an agreement to use the Internet Archive's Archive-it platform as the primary tool for our
budding web archiving program.
This agreement will expand our ability to collect online content and help us provide Ontarians with better and more comprehensive access to evolving information about our government and province.
Stay tuned for more information!
To support educators use of archival materials while still ensuring participants' health and safety during this time of physical distancing, we launched free virtual professional development (PD) sessions for educators of all kinds and at all levels!
For more information or to book a session send an email to refrence@ontario.ca.
In partnership Ontario Ancestors, we developed a four-part webinar series about how to research some of our most popular family history records, including pre-1869 vital statistics and early Crown land records.
Click here to access the recordings on the Ontario Ancestor’s website.
We now offer free virtual orientation sessions and tours that help our researchers learn how to prepare for researching at the Archives and get a behind the scenes glimpse into our holdings!
For more information, click here.
Without in-person access to original records in our collections, we revised our planned monthly themes for our social media channels to feature already-digitized content.
We also launched a new Instagram account to engage new audiences and share diverse content. You can follow us on Instagram @archivesontario
In the summer of 2020, the Archives launched a refreshed online exhibit about the James Bay Treaty (Treaty No. 9) in collaboration with Mushkegowuk Council and Queen’s University Archives.
The exhibit is also available to download for easy offline access.
To ensure the safety of our researchers and staff, we have been looking at ways to provide comprehensive reference services for our in-person researchers from a safe distance.
In preparation for when we re-open, researchers will be able to book one-on-one virtual interviews with Reference staff to help prepare them for visiting the Archives.
Stay tuned for more information!
We are continuing to review and enhance website content for relevance and ease of navigation and discovery.
Some of the pages we have refreshed include:
Although the three-year timeframe of the Customer Experience Strategy is up, we remain dedicated to enhancing our service delivery and online access to our holdings.
In response to the Ministry of Government and Consumer Services’ (MGCS) priority goals of Service Delivery Excellence and Digital Transformation and our strategic priority of Building Digital Capacity, the Archives is developing and implementing a digital strategy with the primary goal of providing increased online access to archival collections. This goal will be achieved by focusing on three strategic outcomes:
We are happy to announce as one of our biggest digital enablers, we will be implementing a new integrated collections management system, to replace our existing systems that provide access to our collections, including the Archives Descriptive Database and our BIBLiON Library catalogue.
The new system will be:
Stay tuned for more information about the new system!
User feedback is the driving force for the development of our digital strategy and the new integrated collections management system. Please stay tuned for more updates and future opportunities to have your say!
In the meantime, if you have any comments or ideas, send e-mail to reference@ontario.ca .
Thank you!