Prince George museum hopes to go digital with northern B.C. archival collection

Monday, April 01, 2019 4:23 PM | Deleted user

Prince George museum the Exploration Place hopes to modernize its archives by digitizing around 900,000 items so that more people can access the information. The Exploration Place houses approximately one-million individual archival items, including documents, visual and audio content and images.


More than 100,000 of the items are already in the museum's public online database but in order to make the full archive digital, the museum needs to update its software, which is from the 1990s and out-of-date. The museum is working with different levels of government to secure funding for new software. The archives are currently being used by historical researchers, students and science researchers, among others.

"The collective story that has brought us to today is what's being held in our museums and archives. And that is what creates that sense of place ... it gives people a sense of pride." There are significant collections at the museum belonging to the LheidliT'enneh First Nation, such as audio tape recordings of people speaking the carrier language Dakelh. Calogheros says the reel tapes are in poor condition and there are very few Dakelh speakers left."We could go down to play them one day and they'll just be dust," she said. "It's very urgent that we have [the tapes] transferred ... when you're talking about language preservation."

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