Some archives will have their archival descriptions in two places:
Their institutional archival discovery database (like U of T’s Discover Archives)
A national, provincial, or territorial archival discovery database (like Ontario's Archeion)
Most often, the most up-to-date information will be in the institution's own database. However, national, provincial, and territorial archival databases can be valuable to locate archival materials related to a person or organization across institutions.
You can search across other archives institutions archival descriptions in provincial and territorial databases.
Like Discover Archives, these portals represent the archival holdings across multiple institutions. To access the archives or get reproduction information you will need to contact the specific archival institution responsible for the records. Note that an archives may be listed in the directory per provincial database but not all of their archival descriptions will be found in the database. Instead, you can use the directory page in each portal to navigate to a specific institution's discovery database.
In most cases, these discovery portals are funded and maintained by provincial archives associations through government funding. They also all use the same database platform - Access to Memory, or AtoM - as Discover Archives. This means that the search guidance for Discover Archives in this guide can also help you search for archival records in these databases.
Library and Archives Canada - https://library-archives.canada.ca/eng
Archives of Manitoba - https://www.gov.mb.ca/chc/archives/
Archives of Ontario - https://www.archives.gov.on.ca/en/index.aspx
Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec - https://www.banq.qc.ca/
Northwest Territories Archives - https://www.nwtarchives.ca/
Nova Scotia Archives - https://archives.novascotia.ca/
Nunavut Archives Program - https://gov.nu.ca/culture-and-heritage/information/archives
Provincial Archives of Alberta - https://provincialarchives.alberta.ca/
Provincial Archives of New Brunswick - https://archives.gnb.ca/archives/?culture=en-CA
Provincial Archives of Newfoundland and Labrador - https://www.therooms.ca/collections-research
Public Archives and Records Office Prince Edward Island - https://www.princeedwardisland.ca/en/topic/libraries-and-archives
Provincial Archives of Saskatchewan - https://www.saskarchives.com/
Royal BC Museum https://www.royalbcmuseum.bc.ca/
Yukon Archives - https://yukon.ca/archives
There are many other archives in Toronto. See the Ontario provincial network, Archeion, for a list of other archives located in Toronto.
When trying to locate where archives are located for a person or organization, it can be helpful to search through databases that aggregate archival descriptions. Note that these aggregators can be helpful to search across archival institutions, but may not contain all archival descriptions that an institution has.
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