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Abstract:
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Between 191 3 and 1970, the Hudson's Bay Company (HBC) produced an
annual calendar which it distributed free of charge through its department stores,
fur trade posts, and various administrative offices. While quantities varied from
year to year, on average the HBC sent out one hundred thousand of these
calendars on an annual basis. Calendars, of course, are not unique to the
Hudson's Bay Company. Mass-produced calendars first appeared in the United
States in the middle part of the nineteenth century, and with advances in the
printing trade and distribution networks, they quickly became popular tools in the
advertising industry.
Now catalogued in the Hudson's Bay Company Archives Documentary Art
Collection, the Company calendar is a popular and often-used visual resource.
This thesis undertakes an archival analysis of the HBC's calendars by examining
the functional context of their creation. In recent years, archivists have been
exploring various aspects of information about the provenance of archival
records, since this information is essential to the records' care and use. The
more archivists and their clients know about the complex contexts which have
shaped records, the more meaningful the records will be. |