Today I was most fortunate to have a tour of the Gatineau Preservation Centre, Library and Archives Canada. Perhaps the item that I found the most interesting was a rather fascinating incubator looking restoration device that can be used to create a very high humidity in order to open up old documents like indentures which were of skin and often had many seals attached to them. Being able to flatten out these documents whicha re often folded up three or four times lengthwise and the same widthwise without cracking them is such a marvelous tool. Having been able to look at some of these old documents in libraries without such a tool really showed me how valuable this tool is to preserve our national heritage as one could then digitize the document and place it into a secure holding so that there would not be a need for it to be handled more than necessary in the future. There were so many other items that were equally fascinating and it is marvelous to see that this new building will house our national memory well into the future although there will be a need for expansion and new buildings as our memory continues to grow at a rapid pace with the introduction of internet and the ability for everyone to create a memory.
I also worked some more on the Andover Parish Registers and completed another page which doesn't seem like very much but my day passed very quickly. I am also training to do the 10K on Saturday which does tend to eat into my day. I have now completed 2440 baptisms which brings me to July 1633. There are just three pages left and I will hopefully complete them tomorrow.
No comments:
Post a Comment