Material may be restricted for a variety for reasons. The restrictions may be in place at the donor’s request, for legislative purposes, for preservation of records, or because the material is unprocessed.
Donor restrictions: Donors may ask that all or a portion of their material be restricted due to sensitive information or privacy concerns.
Preservation restrictions: Material may be restricted because they are extremely fragile and handling of the material may compromise their preservation. Surrogates of the material may be available to users. Ask staff for more information.
Legislation restrictions: Archives may restrict material so that the repository complies with legislation (e.g. PIPEDA). Some baptismal, marriage and burial registers may be restricted due to applicable privacy legislation.
Unprocessed material: Unprocessed material are generally not made available to users because the Archivist does not have a good idea of what is in the collection or fonds. Moreover, there is no way for users to know what is available in the collection/fonds because the finding aid has not been created.
Any restrictions on material will be noted in the finding aid.