Duane Hicks
Thanks to a Museum and Technology Fund grant from the Ministry of Tourism, Culture and Sport, the Fort Frances Museum has hired a co-ordinator to transfer its old database to new software, as well as digitize its 100-year-old newspaper collection.
Jeremy Hughes, who recently worked part-time as a computer program trainer at the local library, now will be the digital records developer at the museum for the next 10 months.
“The primary goal is to transfer all the existing digitized collection information into a new, more user-friendly, more patron-accessible interface that’s called ‘Past Perfect,’” noted Hughes, referring by name to new software he’ll use to compile and organize information which, in turn, will benefit both the public and museum staff alike.
“Several attempts in the past have been made to try and digitize the immense amount of information associated with all of the items in the collection here at the museum,” he added.
“The problem is that it is sort of piecemeal,” he explained. “Certain areas were covered, say photographs were indexed, maps were indexed, the library of books was indexed, and they were all done in somewhat inconsistent formats.”
Hughes said his first task is to coalesce all the digital information that currently exists, then afterward investigate doing a full inventory and getting all the available information together in a searchable format.
Past databases were created using programs like Microsoft Works and FileMaker Pro. But the new software package, Past Perfect, has been designed for museums, and in particular museum patrons, to easily use.
Once the museum’s collection is digitized, a kiosk will be set up at the museum where patrons can sit down and browse its collection via computer.
Hughes said Past Perfect also allows some of this same information to be accessible through online transfer mechanisms, such as the museum’s website, or host a searchable database online which would be available from any computer.
Another aspect of the project is the digitization of the museum’s newspaper archives, including the Fort Frances Times.
These newspapers will be indexed and tagged so that if a patron wants to search for information on a particular event, for instance, they’ll be able to search for and find the relevant newspaper articles.
Hughes said high-resolution photographs will be taken of sections of the newspaper pages and fitted together to form whole pages of a quality far in excess of that found on microfilm, for example.
“By having a high-resolution photograph of every page, it will be preserved, hopefully, forever,” he remarked.
“If that’s all indexed, it will be accessible immediately, accurately,” Hughes added.
“If you’re looking for a particular event, all the related information will show up.”
Museum curator Sherry George said the benefits of the digitization project will be “really huge.”
“Right now with the database that we have, it’s not searchable at all and we’ve got thousands of pieces here,” she noted.
“Every time we do an exhibit here, every time somebody asks for research on a photo or archival documents, we have to manually go look for these.
“Quite often for research we can’t even help people,” added George. “It’s difficult.”
George said the digitization of the collection will allow museum staff to know what they have so when they have an exhibit, they put out the proper things.
Quite often someone will come into the museum and say their grandmother donated an item and they haven’t seen it out on display, and want to see it, and it’s all but impossible to find—even though it’s being cared for at the museum and preserved properly.
“It would be sad if we had an exhibit relating to that piece and it won’t get out because you don’t even know it exists,” she reasoned.
Digitizing the collection also means less rummaging through boxes, less unnecessary handling of items, and thus better preservation of items.
The museum, as mentioned, also has more than a century’s worth of newspapers—and the older ones are very brittle.
“We can’t even do research with them in most cases so [by] having those digitized, it will be an easy thing to go and bring up a newspaper and say, ‘Yes, this is the article you’re looking for,’” George explained.
Hughes, who will get some extra help from students for a few months this summer, has no illusions that the task ahead of him is daunting, but he’s ready.
“It’s exciting, it’s interesting, it’s complicated,” he conceded.
“There’s a whole lot of other areas to look into, in terms of general museum operations and increasing patronage,” Hughes added.
“There’s actually a whole lot of crossover with what I was doing before serving the community at the library, and coming over here.
“Both places are understaffed and could really use support from the community right now, especially in this time of budget cuts,” he stressed.
The project is being funded through a $39,880 grant from the Museum and Technology Fund, with a 20 percent contribution from the town, although the latter almost entirely comes from federal student grants the museum receives.
