Langley – Looking for family photos, an obituary, information about local organizations, or details about the property your house sits on? If so, archives are a great place to start, and from November 17- 23, the Langley Centennial Museum – home of the community’s archives – is recognizing Archives Week.
Created by the Archives Association of BC in 2000, the Week celebrates and draws public attention to the importance of the province’s nearly 200 archival institutions.
Archives – collections of historical documents and records – have been compiled by Langley Centennial Museum since the facility’s early beginnings and are a central part of its work. One of the first community museums in Canada to digitize interviews of its oral history collection, the Museum also has digital media, film, and sound recordings in its collection, in addition to traditional paper-based records and photographs. All are accessible to anyone doing research.
“Staff at the Museum like to think of archival materials as just one part of a larger function: the provision of community history resources,” said Curator Kobi Christian. “Newspaper clippings files, microfiche reels of the local papers, and a growing library of local history publications are also available for use.”
If the Museum doesn’t have the information people are looking for, staff can usually point them in the right direction or help them start their research online.
Langley Centennial Museum’s archive collection, which includes a database of cemetery records, can be searched online at museum.tol.ca/museum/Portal/explore.aspx.
Anyone with a topic they are interested in researching or a question they would like help in answering can contact the Langley Centennial Museum at curator@tol.ca or 604.532.3536.
