Fall 2017 Lamplighter is available here!
Viewing entries in
2017
Several decades worth of materials donated to the archives are now available in the public collection! This backlog and the rest of the collection are now secured and 'future-proofed' through proper storage and housing, and ongoing digital preservation. The collection is now easier to navigate and more accessible!
Oliver & District Heritage Society is currently seeking photographs to use for our new exhibit "Deep Roots", a permanent display all about Oliver and the surrounding regional district. We are hoping to use local photographs as much as possible - see list for details! Terms and conditions outlined within.
This position has been filled.
This position has been filled.
The Archives
The first thing to know is that the Archives can be thought of in four distinctive sections: the Research Room, office/work Spaces, and Collection Quarantine, and the "Vault".
You are probably most familiar with the Research Room - this is the place where researchers come and browse our Family History Files, Subject Files, and our extensive Research Library of local materials. It's the public 'front' of the Archives. Then there's workspaces of course, where staff, volunteers, and the public have desks, large tables and counter space to work on. There's also the quarantine area, where we freeze and clean incoming items before they are added to the collection.
You may not, however, have ever seen the back room of the Archives where we house all of the unpublished items in the archives collection: one-of-a-kind photographs, maps, diagrams, diaries, personal collections of documents, and so much more. We call it "The Vault". It's a pretty amazing place. You can access items in the vault on request if you're doing research. The Vault is also where we house the backlog of donated items that are awaiting processing as they are added to the collection.
The Backlog
Like all archives, we have a backlog of donated materials that hasn't been added to our collection. We work on the backlog whenever we can, but all of the paperwork, adding items to our database, applying conservation methods, and properly housing the materials takes a lot of time. With limited staff and resources, it really adds up. Here's what our backlog looked like in the spring of 2016:
The "Before" project photos:
Oliver and District Heritage Society Receives Grant (August 2016)
We are pleased to announce that we received a grant from Library and Archives Canada to hire two archivists to deal with our backlog of donated archival materials. Since that time, they've been busy, busy, busy getting the Vault and the backlog into good order.
Progress
It's been 5 months since the project started, see what we've been up to!
Solid work!
We've still got a ways to go, but we'll continue to post updates of our progress. Thanks for following!
We are very excited to announce that the BC Museums Association has awarded us $78,000 of Canada 150 funding to build our new permanent exhibit with the working title "Deep Roots".
This position has been filled.
When: April 26th at 7:00pm
Where: Quail's Nest Arts Center (5840 Airport Road), Oliver BC
Guest Speaker: Author Joe Smuin ; a photographic history of Kettle Valley Railway spur to the South Okanagan.
As of November 2016, the transition process for the new BC Societies Act took effect, which meant that we had to examine our current constitution and bylaws in order to properly comply with the new rules. Changes to our bylaws will need to be voted on by our memebrship at our upcoming AGM. Here's what we came up with!
The Oliver and District Heritage Society has applied for and received $60,000 toward a new Heritage Garden to help serve the community of Oliver, thanks to the provincial funding program "BC Rural Dividend Fund for Community Capacity Building".
We began our New Year with significant improvements to the Archives building - new floors, new paint, new workspace, and a complete rearrangement of the Research Library and workable areas.