Wednesday, February 19, 2014

City of Greater Sudbury Archives

This morning CBC radio's Morning North featured a segment on a recent donation to the Sudbury Archives.  Hearing about community archival donations on local media is a rare occurrence so it was nice to see community interest in the Sudbury Archives. Details on the recent donation can be seen here.

The Sudbury Archives was established relatively recently.  In 2008 the city hired a professional archivist and the City of Greater Sudbury Archives opened to the public in May 2012.  The Archives houses municipal government records as well as private organizational, business, and personal papers. Personally, I was surprised by the relative newness of this community and municipal archive.  Naively I assumed that Sudbury would have long ago established an archives to preserve it's documentary heritage -- even if that archive was simply part of a local museum.

The Sudbury District Archives Interest Group was instrumental in partnering with the City of Greater Sudbury to establish the Sudbury Archives.  The Interest Group became concerned about the destruction of Sudbury land records and played a key role in advocating for a community archives. 

The portion of the holdings of the City of Sudbury Archives are available online via Archeion.  The items that are available online are well described and include ample contextual information.  Some of the online records also include images.  A list of the microfilm available for reference in the reading room is also available online.

One of the interesting (albeit a tad cheesy) parts of the Sudbury Archives website is a game called Grandma's Attic which is designed to teach students about the difference between archives, libraries, and museums.  The game is simple by design but is a great example of an interactive way to teach people about archives. 

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