Developments at the City of Ottawa Main Archives

In their spring newsletter the City of Ottawa Archives has news they have received a Museums and Technology Fund  grant from the Government of Ontario to digitize 10,000 negatives from their Andrews – Newton Collection (1946 -1993).

"The Andrews-Newton photographers documented Ottawa’s growth and transformation. From the post-war years through to the end of the 1950s, the staff worked as the official photographers for The Ottawa Citizen newspaper, capturing major events, moments of disasters and celebrations."

According to archivist John Lund the grant is effective 1 April when a person will be hired to perform the digitization using equipment already available. They aim is to have all 10,000 images, which are already reasonably well cataloged,  available online by the end of 2014. This is only a small part of the Andrews-Newton, some of which takes considerable conservation work being acetate negatives.

While in the Archives building at 100 Tallwood I asked about information given by Prof Bruce Elliott at last Saturday's BIFHSGO meeting that Library and Archives Canada had transferred a collection of assessment records for the former City of Nepean to the City of Ottawa Main Archives. I was told the transfer is not yet formerly complete and there is considerable work to be done to stabilize the materials before they can be made accessible to the public. Transfers of some smaller collections considered to be specifically of local rather than national value are underway, under negotiation or on the wish list.

Contact information is: Ottawa.ca/archives and on Facebook @ City of Ottawa Archives