By Doug Collie | a day ago | Photo: Mountain View Museum & Archives - File photo/MVP Staff
OLDS — People from all over the world are accessing bits of family or Olds and area history thanks to the purchase of a new scanner for the Mountain View Museum & Archives (MVMA), says Olds Historical Society president Bill Hall.
Hall made that statement during a presentation to the Town of Olds council during its last committee-of-the whole meeting.
"We have purchased a new scanner, which we can use to reproduce photos and documents, and patrons are happily paying for this service. We get people phoning from all over the world asking for research," Hall said.
"Our archivist is able to pull those documents up and scan them, and they're happy to have these old photos from the 1920s and stuff sent their way for a fee."
Hall said that's turned into a nice little revenue stream for the facility.
Hall said last year, archivist Gerda Vester received 26 requests for extensive research for which patrons paid and/or made donations.
"We received and processed 22 total donations, including two huge, significant ones from the Town of Olds," Hall said.
He said through Vester, 14 donations of archival material were sorted and catalogued in the archives.
"Prior to our staff that we have in place now, including the professional archivist, this stuff was in boxes," Hall said.
"All of that had to be sorted, it had to be cataloged, and it had to find home, so that if you come in and want to know something about Harmattan, you'll find it in the Harmattan file, and not in the box on the shelves. So that's significant work by the archives."
Hall said people from around the world visit the Mountain View Museum & Archives website.
"We get calls every week to do research for people, and we're becoming quite a hub, due to the fact that we're one of the rare places that has an archive in central Alberta," he said.