And they're not happening in Manitoba.
I won't go into detail again about what I consider to be the piss-poor state of Manitoba's online heritage presence, if you want to know more about my opinion check out my post The state of Manitoba's online heritage resources.
Library and Archives Canada has bypassed the government website route and went straight to the people, so to speak. Last year they began uploading their massive collection to a Flickr album and created a blog to give tips and suggestions about finding information in their collection. Great stuff and both sites continue to be updated regularly.
Also, the New York City Municipal Archives has uploaded almost a million !!! images to their website. It's really worth checking out for any urban history buff !
You forgot to mention in your essay your own great archive of Safeways and other Wpg buildings which outshines all other local building archives. Incidentally, I intended to do a Safeway history and took several photos until I saw that you anticipated me. I may have some shots you don't have if you are interested. As to the dismal state of Manitoba online archives, a corollary is the diminishing access to paper artifacts. At one time MB Archives was open on Saturday and I could have items from the Leg Library left there for me, since LL was only open weekdays. No more, alas. Weekend before last I went to see something in the Drache collection at UW Library and found it was moved into locked storage and the weekend staff couldn't get in to fetch things. More and more Libraries are putting their old stuff into cold storage, which of course diminishes usage, which in turn justifies getting rid of it altogether. Keep up the great work! Norman Beattie
ReplyDeleteThanks! In the fall I started an index of my history posts by type of history: people, businesses, stores etc. and never got around to finishing it. I should do that.
ReplyDeleteThe U of M Archives is also open hours that would make a banker blush - 10 to 4 M-F I think it is.
Certainly making their materials accessible to people is not the mantra of any of our assorted archives.