Municipal mergers [in Québec] provided archivists with an abundance of challenges in regard to the transfer of active, semi-active, and historical documents as well as the preparation of "merged" personnel. In this article, Bernard Savoie recalls the stages, the constraints and the benefits of the 2002 merger in the Outaouais Urban Community of five towns to create the City of Gatineau. Among the actions that proved effective, he notes the creation of a document management committee a year before the merger, the collaboration of the Information Service in sharing knowledge and better project planning, and the holding of training sessions organized by the archivists for people involved in document management. From the time of the merger, the City of Gatineau has been using the web version of document management software, including for its historical archives ; this is permitting the city archivists to serve all the city services regardless of their geographical location. Although the merging of the archives went relatively smoothly, there are still challenges : the management of digital files, the application of the rules of the new retention schedule (including assigning documents for destruction), the creation of retention rules for the data bases that are in use, and the management of historical archives.

     This article presents an innovative public-private sector partnership that is being undertaken in the Outaouais region of western Quebec. The concept of grouping four archival organizations (the Outaouais Centre of the Archives nationales du Québec, the Archives Division of the City of Gatineau, the Société de généalogie de l'Outaouais (Outaouais Genealogical Society) and the Société d'histoire de l'Outaouais (Outaouais Historical Society) in a single repository was initiated about 1994. Ten years later, the project has been completed, with the inauguration of the Centre d'archives, de généalogie et d'histoire (Centre for Archives, Genealogy and History) in the Gatineau Maison de la culture (cultural centre). The centre offers citizens convenient access to archival resources that were previously dispersed in various locations. After describing the genesis of the project and the principles upon which it is based, the authors explain its innovative nature and discuss the hurdles that were encountered during its execution, in particular those which were related to the institutional image of the organizations involved, the acquisition of private archives and their monetary evaluation, daily operations, the keeping of statistics, reproduction of documents, and the procedures and practices which the institutions either had in common or which were specific to each one. In spite of the challenges encountered in realizing the partnership, the authors emphasize its advantages. They highlight, for example, a significant increase in visits to the consultation room, the possibility of sharing diverse types of expertise, and the benefits of access to a wider range of funding sources than any of the single organizations would have had.

     In this article, the authors share with us the issues and principles which underlie a process of municipal mergers and restructuring. By presenting the experience of the new City of Gatineau, in the Outaouais region, the authors survey the steps that were necessary to put in place an integrated system of records management adapted to the needs of the new entity. To attain their objectives and to plan their work, the persons in charge of the transition process relied largely on the Guide de gestion des documents dans le contexte d'une restructuration municipale [Guide to Records Management in the Context of a Municipal Restructuring]. In spite of the strengths of this instrument, however, the archivists of the new City of Gatineau had to address afresh many questions related to the options that presented themselves through the transition process. In effect, despite the similarities in the experience of restructuring, the authors conclude that each such situation has a distinctive character. The regional context, the size of the bodies that are merged, and the degree to which they have implemented records management practices are all factors that render each merger unique.