"I think the most important thing to preserve is the intellectual order. As long as we note that in the finding aid, the user would be able to recreate it in order to understand how it was arranged by the creator..."It took two years before IKB Rare Books finally received the collection in 2000; UBC is only one among many museums and archives who took an interest in Bob Harris’s work. Rare Books has a mostly open policy regarding family donations to the UBC archives; the process typically involves an appraisal, both financially and in terms pre-existing materials which have been stored.
Maritime Archaeologist James Delgado was
involved in the distribution process for the R.C. Harris materials in the years
after Mr. Harris passed away. When asked about his involvement, he writes that
The key thing here (and then) was that when a person dedicates a portion of their life to research, and amasses a collection such as Bob's, it is essential that it go into a public repository for other scholars and interested parties to consult. Universities are ideal because they are committed to research and ongoing scholarship. UBC was the right place, in my mind, not only for that but because of Bob's interests, which fit nicely into the scope of the UBC library's existing collections.
Bruce Ward, then Secretary to the BC Historical Maps
Society, donated the collection to IKB Rare Books in 2000. It is an unusual
fonds, given that only about ten percent of the materials are originals; the
rest consist of copies, maps both complete and incomplete, reference books and
ephemera once kept in the Harris family home. About 15 drawers, amounting to
about 500 maps in total, were received by UBC in 2004. It is clear both from
his articles and from Bob Harris’s own hand-written finding aids that many of
these files were intended for future use; either for the historian, or natural
history enthusiast.
