“Splash from the Past,” a brand-new kids camp, will be offered at the Museum this July 24th - 26th.
The Oliver & District Heritage Society is once again offering its popular Downtown Heritage Walking Tours this summer from June 14th to August 30th. The guided tours, which will run every Friday at 10:30 am in June and Fridays and Saturdays at 10:30 am for the rest of the summer, will cover the history of Oliver’s historic buildings and landmarks, from the CPR Station to portions of the Ditch. Tours will be led by the ODHS’ knowledgeable summer student guides and will take approximately 45 minutes.
All tours start from the Oliver Visitor Centre and finish at the Museum at 474 School Avenue. Participants are asked to bring appropriate footwear and dress for the weather, as tours run rain or shine. Each tour covers approximately 1.5 km. Sunscreen and water are encouraged.
Here’s your chance to learn about Oliver’s historic downtown and become a local architecture buff. Learn about places like the Oliver Theatre, Dr. Ball’s Office, the BC Police Building, and more! Come down to the Oliver Museum for more information, or you can visit our website at www.oliverheritage.ca. We hope to see you there!
The new Lamplighter newsletter is now available.
Starting on June 7th, the Oliver Museum will host the youth photography exhibit “Oliver in Focus.”
Our 2019 summer Heritage Assistant positions are now open! Apply today.
Yvonne Moore to share school memories at Annual General Meeting on May 8th.
Visit the Museum Easter Monday from 1-4 pm for egg-hunting, crafts, and candy!
The 2019 AGM will take place Wednesday, May 8, 2019 at 7:00 pm.
The Oliver & District Heritage Society has some new and returning faces this year in its new Executive Director and Curator.
With the help of some solar panels and a new furnace and air conditioner, the Archives is saving energy and preserving its documents and resources for the future.
A one-day event featuring a free, all-ages workshop on recording family oral histories, kids crafts and colouring, activities, and snacks! Come use our Selfie Station to take family photos, mark your family’s origins on our world map, and celebrate your family!
The Oliver & District Heritage Society will be closed for the holidays from Monday, Dec. 18th to Wednesday, Jan. 3rd.
We look forward to welcoming you back in January 2018, when there will be plenty of new things to discover. Our Heritage Garden is well on its way and our new Deep Roots exhibit will be taking shape inside the Museum. Feel free to stop by and see the changes taking place, and check our Facebook page for updates.
We wish you a safe, peaceful, and beautiful holiday season
Fall 2017 Lamplighter is available here!
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.