Service Level Standards

The Provincial Archives of Saskatchewan is dedicated to delivering high-quality service.

Quality

Quality services is important to us. The foundation of this quality is based on:

• creating a welcoming environment for researchers
• providing a personalized response by a staff member for each enquiry
• providing reproductions of archival records that match the quality of the originals, given technological and preservation limitations.

Access to Records

Archival research can be rewarding, and we strive to make archival records accessible by:

• sharing information and making records available to all people
• working with you to ensure any accessibility needs you may have will be accommodated
• providing assistance when you need to use specialized equipment in the public reading room to access materials in formats such as microfilm, audio, video, and film. We may require 1-2 days of notice to provide access to certain record formats or specialized equipment in some cases.

Legal and preservation requirements

Some records have additional legislative, donor and preservation requirements.  We will provide you with access to records as we are able.  We will try to suggest suitable alternative records to view if there are access or preservation considerations that delay immediate viewing. 
To learn more, please visit Access to Restricted Records. 

Collaborative

We will work with you to facilitate your research by:

• listening and asking questions so that we understand your research goals and providing advice on accessing records at PAS that might be useful to your research project;
• providing access to finding aids and other reference tools that help identify and locate records;
• providing referrals to resources and services at other institutions;
• explaining and navigating access restrictions that might apply to records you are interested in viewing or having copied; and
• facilitating self-digitization of records in the public reading room under our standard terms.

Reconciliation

We are committed to working collaboratively with Indigenous peoples on the path of reconciliation. We recognize that this work will differ from individual to individual and from group to group. We want to build relationships guided by the principles of respect, relevance, reciprocity, and responsibility, as emphasized by the Reconciliation Framework developed by the Steering Committee on Canada’s Archives. For further information about our dedication to reconciliation, please visit our Reconciliation page.

Timely and responsive

Providing a timely response to your questions is important to us. We aim to achieve the service response timeframes listed below, 90% of the time.  We will achieve this by:

• responding to written enquiries within 4-6 weeks of receiving them; 
• monitoring the public reference phone during the hours that we are open to the public and responding to phone calls and messages that we receive within 1 business day;
• reproducing records on your behalf, based on our fee schedule;
• completing routine reproduction requests within 15 working days; and
• responding to requests from government staff according to the urgency of the request or within the timeframe of existing agreements.

While we do have set retrieval times, we will try to accommodate retrieval requests outside of those set times as resources are available.

For extensive or complex reproduction orders, we will work with you to determine a workable timeframe.