Chris and Rhiannon hit the road for our first trip of the year last Wednesday, February 20! We picked up materials from our new partners at Westbank Museum and dropped off materials at Peachland Museum.
We hit the road one last time for the year to drop off some materials we had on loan from Naramata Museum since the summer and pick-up more materials! During our last trip to Naramata in the summer, we had picked up Naramata Co-op Growers’ Exchange meeting minutes and Irrigation District minute book, which are now digitized and can be found here.
As summer drew to a close, we spent some time on the road to visit a couple of local museums to digitize some materials on-site. The first stop was Enderby & District Museum and Archives to digitize The Shuswap Country, a self-published photograph album documenting Erskine Burnett's travels throughout central/southern British Columbia. The drive up to Enderby was so lovely, and it felt as if we were driving through a postcard. The first signs of autumn were visible on the trees, with hues of greens, yellows and reds kissing the landscape. We arrived on-site to a busy museum.
Following my trip north earlier this month, on Friday I hit the road again to visit three of our partners to the south of Kelowna in Peachland, Summerland, and Naramata.
Last summer our team toured the Okanagan, visiting numerous museums and archives. We would set-up in their spaces and spend 3 days digitizing as much as possible, then turn around and head back home to Kelowna. We had a lot of fun and made some great connections. This summer, however, we’ve adopted a slightly different model for digitization. We are now mostly borrowing items from our partners for a few weeks to digitize them in-house at UBC Okanagan.
This site visit was the teams first of the Fall 2017 Term. This visit only had two of our team members heading out and collecting scans. This included our new Co-op student, Sarah accompanied by Sharon who had been on numerous visits over the summer. This Museum is primarily run by volunteers and is located in a building that shares space with the Okanagan Regional Library.
Osoyoos and District Museum and Archives was the third over-night trip, and my last on-site collection trip of the season.
Alex and I worked on scanning the textual documents of the Katie Lacey and Kruger Family Fonds, while Sharon migrated finding-aids for them, as well as approximately 1500 pre-scanned photographs. We created more original scans here than at any other repository: over 1400 scans in three days!
The site visit to the Keremeos Museum was the team’s second overnight trip this summer. The Museum was in the process of moving from its original building (an old holding cell) to its new location: the former Keremeos Masonic Hall. The building was quite spacious and came with a piano, much to Eamon’s delight. On our second day in Keremeos, Eamon and I were interviewed and photographed by a reporter for a local newspaper, so we’re looking forward to seeing what she writes about the project!
Our project necessarily involves forging relationships with people working in the repositories of the Southern Interior; I enjoy meeting new people when we go off-site to a new museum, and occasionally I meet someone who leaves a lasting impression.
Summerland was our third site visit and first overnight trip. It also happens to be Sharon’s hometown!
We worked in the back room of the Summerland Museum and Heritage Society, surrounded by boxes of archived materials. We quickly got to work on the pre-selected photographs, which came with measurements and plenty of information ready to be plugged into our metadata spreadsheets. Also in the collection was a Women’s Institute minute book, which Alex took to scanning using our Xcanex portable scanner. We captured over 500 original scans during the course of our visit.
