What's to be achieved with Documentary Heritage Communities Program Funding?

Here are descriptions of the objectives of two of the 65 DHCP projects funded across Canada.

Online Digital Expansion of the Arnprior & McNab/Braeside Archives:  $63,655

The Arnprior & McNab/Braeside Archives (AMBA) is expanding their online capabilities of making their holdings accessible.  As its first phase, this project will update, improve, and modernize the current search portion of the website, as well as migrating the existing website contents to a new site. As part of this project, a select number of documents will be added to the search function. The new software will allow searching across both the documents and the descriptions of our holdings, as well as having them easily found on online search engines and viewable on the various platforms. Online analytics and statistics to monitor the traffic to the site will be started.  As well, the software will reduce the manual workload by automating the upload of the in-house description holdings and resizing and watermarking images.
At the end of this project, the AMBA will be positioned for the future with a robust, modern, online platform. Subsequent phases will see AMBA digitizing their valuable newspaper collection and other documents and making them searchable and available to the public.

British Columbia Genealogical Society Pedigree Chart Project: $4,609

Since our beginnings in 1971, British Columbia Genealogical Society members and others have contributed their family history research to the Society to ensure both its preservation and access to all interested researchers.
The oldest parts of this unique collection, known as the BCGS Pedigree Chart collection, consists of pedigree charts, trees and family information sheets which are held in the BCGS Library. Many of the documents were handwritten in pen or pencil; various sizes and types of paper were used; some are now fading or otherwise deteriorating. Interestingly, the worst are often those printed on early computer printers.
These charts have never been copied, although volunteers have indexed all the family names on the documents.
With this DHCP grant to the BC Genealogical Society these documents are being scanned professionally. The original documents then will be stored for preservation purposes, and the scans will be available to researchers at the BCGS Library and on the BCGS website.

Thanks for this information to:

• Laurie Dougherty, Archivist at the Arnprior & McNab/Braeside Archives 
• M. Diane Rogers of the BCGS who mentions the society has more projects ready to go while hoping other genealogical societies will also apply. Find out about the program criteria and how to apply at http://www.bac-lac.gc.ca/eng/services/documentary-heritage-communities-program/Pages/documentary-heritage-communities-program.aspx