The Canadian Archivist Douglas Brymner and his «Noble Dream»
Bibliographic record
Abstract
The purpose of the article is to reconstruct the life path and activities of Douglas Brymner (1823–1902), journalist, politician, state server and the fi rst chairman of the Dominion Archives of Canada, a member of the Royal Society of Canada (since 1895) and the American Antiquarian Society (since 1898), based on archival and personal sources, to analyze the main issues of the implementation of the Canadian archive development project «The Noble Dream», which was the result of combining elements of the British and European archival systems into a single Canadian archival network. The methodology is based on the principles of historicism, objectivity, and general scientifi c (analysis and synthesis, methods of structural and functional analysis), as well as general historical methods – chronological, retrospective, and biographical, thanks to which it was possible to reconstruct the picture of a person’s life in a certain space. The use of source studies methods made it possible to analyze D. Brymner’s «Reports on Canadian Archives» and to explore the collection of Frederick Haldimand (1718–1791) in these reports. The scientifi c novelty of the study lies in the fact that for the fi rst time, on the basis of a comprehensive analysis and involvement in the scientifi c circulation of archival and personal sources, to explore the little-known pages from D. Brymner’s biography, including archival activity. Conclusions. In the formulated conclusions, the chronological sequence of D. Brymner’s activities as the head of the archive branch at the Department of Agriculture of Canada is documented, his personal contribution to the activities of the archive, his role in initiating the copying of archival documents, including outside Canada, and the development of the universal document collection system are presented. References: 1. Brymner, D. (1899). Report on Canadian Archives for the year 1898. Ottawa: Printed by Brown Chamberlin, printer to the Queen’s most Excellent Majesty. Retrieved from https://archive.org/details/reportoncanadian00publ/page/n7/mode/2up [in English].2. Brymner, D. (1883). Report on Canadian Archives for the year 1882. Ottawa: Printed by Brown Chamberlin, printer to the Queen’s most Excellent Majesty. Retrieved from https://archive.org/details/reportoncanadia188182publ/page/n5/mode/2up [in English].3. Brymner, D. (1884). Report on Canadian Archives for the year 1883. Ottawa: Printed by Brown Chamberlin, printer to the Queen’s most Excellent Majesty. Retrieved from https://archive.org/details/reportoncanadian1883publ/page/n5/mode/2up [in English].4. Brymner, D. (1887). Report on Canadian Archives for the year 1886. Ottawa: Printed by Brown Chamberlin, printer to the Queen’s most Excellent Majesty. Retrieved from https://archive.org/details/reportoncanadia11unkngoog/page/n6/mode/2up [in English].5. Brymner, D. (1888). Report on Canadian Archives for the year 1887. Ottawa: Printed by Brown Chamberlin, printer to the Queen’s most Excellent Majesty. Retrieved from https://archive.org/details/reportoncanadian1887publuoft/page/n3/mode/2up [in English].6. Brymner, D. (1889). Report on Canadian Archives for the year 1888. Ottawa: Printed by Brown Chamberlin, printer to the Queen’s most Excellent Majesty. Retrieved from https://archive.org/details/reportoncanadian1888publ/page/n3/mode/2up [in English].7. Brymner, D. (1890). Report on Canadian Archives for the year 1889. Ottawa: Printed by the Brown Chamberlin, printer to the Queen’s most Excellent Majesty. Retrieved from https://archive.org/details/reportoncanadian1889publuoft/page/n3/mode/2up [in English].8. Brymner, D. (1891). Report on Canadian Archives for the year 1890. Ottawa: Printed by Brown Chamberlin, printer to the Queen’s most Excellent Majesty. Retrieved from https://archive.org/details/reportoncanadian1890publuoft/page/n3/mode/2up [in English].9. Brymner, D. (1897). Report on Canadian Archives for the year 1896. Ottawa: Printed by Brown Chamberlin, printer to the Queen’s most Excellent Majesty. Retrieved from https://archive.org/details/reportoncanadian1896publ/page/n3/mode/2up [in English].10. Brymner, D. (1898). Report on Canadian Archives for the year 1897. Ottawa: Printed by Brown Chamberlin, printer to the Queen’s most Excellent Majesty. Retrieved from https://archive.org/details/reportoncanadian1897publ/page/n3/mode/2up [in English].11. Dictionary of Canadian biography. Douglas Brymner. Retrieved from http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio.php?BioId=40708 [in English].12. Jenkinson, H. (1922). A manual of archive administration including the problems of war archives and archive making. Oxford: At the Clarendon press. Retrieved from https://archive.org/details/manualofarchivea00jenk/page/n5/mode/2up [in English].13. Kingsford, W. (1886). Canadian archeology. An essay. Montreal. Retrieved from https://archive.org/details/canadianarchaeol00kinguoft [in English].14. Kingsford, W. (1894). The history of Canada (Vol. VII). Toronto, 1894. Retrieved from https://archive.org/details/historyofcanadav07king/page/n15/mode/2up [in English].15. Lacasse, D. & Lechasseur, A. (1997). The National Archives of Canada (1872–1997). Ottawa. [in English].16. Matiash I., Romanovski R., Kovtun M., Vintoniv H., Maistrenko A. & Pryhodko L. (Comps.). (2010). Archivna ukrainika v Canadi. Kyiv, Alberta. Derzhkomarchiv Ukrainy, UNDIASD, Kanadskii instytut ukrainskih studii Albertskoho universytetu. [in Ukrainian].17. Parker, D. (1913). Guide to the Materials for United States History in Canadian Archives. Washington: Carnegie Institution of Washington. Retrieved from https://archive.org/details/guidetomaterials00parkuoft/page/n3/mode/2up [in English].18. Report concerning Canadian archives fоr the year 1904. (1905). Ottawa. Retrieved from https://electriccanadian.com/makers/carchives1904.pdf [in English].19. The historical section of the general staff. A history of the Organization, Development and Services of the Military and Naval Forces of Canada From the Peace of Paris in 1763, to the Present Time. Retrieved from https://archive.org/details/vol1t3historyoforganiz01quebuoft/page/n5/mode/2up [in English].20. Wilson, I. E. (1982). A Noble Dream: The Origins of the Public Archives of Canada. Archivaria, 15, 16–35. Retrieved from https://archivaria.ca/index.php/archivaria/article/view/10966/11899 [in English].21. Justin, W. (1889). Narrative and critical history of America. Vol. VIII. P. 116. Boston. Retrieved from https://archive.org/details/narrativeandcri17winsgoog/page/n10/mode/2up [in English].
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.004 | 0.006 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.004 | 0.006 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.026 | 0.019 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.010 | 0.003 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.003 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.004 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.005 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".