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Hugh Taylor (archivist)

English-born Canadian archivist (1920–2005)

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionSep 24, 2026
Entity authorityQ51375217 ↗
Source-derived summary

Hugh Alexander Taylor (22 January 1920 – 11 September 2005) was an English-born Canadian archivist, archival theorist and educator.

Born in England in 1920, Taylor studied history at the University of Oxford and took his Archives Diploma at the University of Liverpool. His early archival career in England included positions with the Leeds Public Libraries, Liverpool Public Libraries, the County of Northumberland, and the University of Newcastle upon Tyne.

Taylor emigrated to Canada in 1965, taking the position of founding Provincial Archivist of the Provincial Archives of Alberta. He also became founding Provincial Archivist of New Brunswick in 1967 and joined the Public Archives of Canada (PAC) in 1971 as Director of the Historical Branch, which he renamed the Archives Branch shortly after his arrival. He established eight divisions within his branch, including media and maps. Taylor left the Public Archives of Canada to become the Provincial Archivist of Nova Scotia in 1978, retiring in 1982 to Wolfville, NS. He and his wife moved to Qualicum Beach in 1989, and later to Victoria in 1993.

During his career at the Public Archives of Canada, Taylor undertook numerous initiatives that shaped that institution as well as the archival profession. Internally, he recreated its organizational structure to highlight the strength of its media-based archives. He was also a strong supporter of the newly formed Association of Canadian Archivists as well as its new scholarly journal, Archivaria.

Editorial summary

“Hugh Taylor (archivist)” enters the record as english-born Canadian archivist (1920–2005). Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Hugh, Taylor and archivist can confirm, complicate or overturn.

Editorial reviewA concise reference frame for defining the subject, testing terminology and identifying the institution closest to the evidence. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1920, 2005, 1965, 1967—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1920-01-22. Its strongest next move is a source search built around Hugh, Taylor and archivist.
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“Hugh Taylor (archivist)” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Hugh, Taylor and archivist provides the most credible route into that argument.

Evidence profile

Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 24, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q51375217. VIAF identifies the subject as 14894854. The Library of Congress control number is n82148845. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1920, 2005, 1965 and 1967.

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This entry incorporates text from “Hugh Taylor (archivist)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.