Shelley Sweeney
University of Manitoba Head of Archives and Special Collections
Winnipeg, MB
Shelley Sweeney has been Head, University of Manitoba Archives & Special Collections, in Winnipeg, Canada, since 1998. Previously she was University Archivist at the University of Regina from 1983 to 1998. She has a BA, Latin (1981), and was in the first class of the Master of Archival Studies program (1985) at UBC. Sweeney received her Ph.D. in Archival Enterprise from UT Austin (2002), studying under David B Gracy II. She authored, with colleagues, the Canadian archival Code of Ethics, was President of the Association of Canadian Archivists (ACA) and Secretary of the Academy of Certified Archivists in the US, of which she is a charter member. She was Secretary General of the Bureau of Canadian Archivists. Sweeney was a founding member of the ICA Section on University and Research Institution Archives and was recently ACA Rep to the Canadian Commission for UNESCO Sectoral Commission on Culture, Communication and Information.
Since 2009, Shelley has been heavily involved in the bid and the development of the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation at the University of Manitoba which is responsible for the records of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission on Indian Residential Schools, once the commission has wrapped up.
Shelley has written about the use of what she terms "spider advocates," those experts, expert amateurs, and interested and knowledgeable members of the public, who assist with all types of archival management: acquisition, fund raising, description, outreach, etc.
Shelley has also written about the history of provenance, and has an upcoming chapter advising reference librarians on how to provide assistance to people looking for archival resources, in the fifth edition of Reference and Information Services: an Introduction.