Poor quality storage resulted in damaged and destroyed records, and poor quality retrieval services led to long delays for the public and in some cases made materials difficult to locate.

Former storage conditions
Archives of Ontario Photograph

Former storage conditions
Archives of Ontario Photograph

Overcrowded volumes
Archives of Ontario Photograph

Volumes at government record centre
Archives of Ontario Photograph

In 1997, a flood from a broken pipe at a government record centre engulfed over 30,000 records, resulting in a cost of over $2 million for recovery and restoration. Some records were lost forever.

Damaged containers
Archives of Ontario Photograph

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June 1997, flood in one of the Records Centres. At this point, the water had already subsided about two feet.
Archives of Ontario Photograph

After over 100 years of collecting some quarter of a million cubic feet of volumes and documents, using various forms of records-keeping across five different locations, it had become virtually impossible to fully track the collections.

In addition, prior to 2006, the Archives had relied on manual ordering and records management systems. As a result, the full scope of the materials and their condition was not fully known.

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Former storage facility
Archives of Ontario Photograph

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