April 2024 in the Archives
Public open hours: The Archives were open for enquiries and on-site research appointments 17.5 hours/week as usual, with drop-in hours on Tuesday mornings.
Enquiries: 21, of which 10 in person.
Running total for 2024: 61
On-site volunteer hours logged: 52 (5 volunteers)
Volunteer projects (ongoing):
- municipal demolished-property files indexing
- historic building permits indexing - view here
- scanning photographs
- physical numbering of hundreds of items in several collections of personal papers, preparatory to cataloguing
Digital images:
- Larry McCann & UVic students' photographic sample of Oak Bay houses by building era, photos taken ca. 2000-2002: 1300 of 1700 uploaded so far, scanning and processing of final 1/4 underway - view here
- images of all 5 ledgers of historic building permit records now public online - view here
Views on Flickr in April: 13.6 K (total 278.9K by 30 April, since 3 Mar 2022).
There are now more than 6,000 publicly viewable photos on the growing Oak Bay Archives Flickr account [link] in addition to the 1300 on the District website [link]. Owing to copyright restrictions and other access conditions, some items that have been digitized cannot be made public online. In many cases, individual copies can be provided privately to researchers on request, for personal study purposes only. Non-public images are also used remotely by volunteers working on indexing and tagging projects, and in-house for reference during cataloguing, to minimize light exposure to and handling of the originals.
Archivist's work:
- scanning and processing of McCann digital images as above
- creating #Archive30 Twitter series - didn't finish all 30 posts in April, will continue in May.
- preparing reference materials for summer Night Markets
- reviewing and updating catalogue descriptions of PR 106 Pattinson family papers
- processing new/recent accessions
- internal and external enquiries research and responses, facilitating researcher visits, volunteer management & monthly bulletin - #50!
April 2024 completes my fourth year as Archivist at the District of Oak Bay! (half time, i.e. 2 years full time equivalent).
Questions or appointment requests? Please get in touch!
Website: https://www.oakbay.ca/archives
Photo Search: https://www.oakbay.ca/archives/photographs
More photos: https://www.flickr.com/photos/oakbayarchives/
Blog posts: https://connect.oakbay.ca/archives
Email: archives@oakbay.ca
Phone: 250-598-3290
- Post by Anna Sander, 7 May 2024.
To cite: Sander, Anna. (2024, April). 'April in the Archives.' [Blog post]. District of Oak Bay, Archives. Retrieved from https://connect.oakbay.ca/archives/news_feed/april-2024-in-the-archives [date accessed].
