Written by Nettie Rempel-Ong
Years ago, my father-in-law read an article about intangible gifts you can give to your loved ones. He was not the sort of person to spend money for the want of more tchotchkes (stuff). In the lead up to Christmas that year, he gathered photos that were stored in the cabinet haphazardly and sorted them into photo albums. It was a thoughtful gift of time that archived moments that were captured on film in a method that we still can enjoy years later.
Nature Manitoba has been the recipient of generous benefactors, who have entrusted us with decades of memorabilia since our inception. Some of the challenges of older memorabilia are that technology has changed multiple times over the past 40 years. We have seen reel to reel, VHS, audio tapes, CDs, DVD and now we are living in a streaming services world. We are sure some of you might be chuckling or shaking your head.
Office volunteers have started looking at what older media content we have at the office and what we can do to preserve it with the idea of creating a usable digital archive that honours the gifts that were given and can create a legacy going forward.
In one cabinet drawer, we discovered 60 rolls of 16mm film. The oldest film with a date was from 1988 and the most current is 2007. Some of the film reels have labels while others do not.
Another cabinet drawer had over 7000 slides (again some with labels and indexes) dating back to the 1960’s with decades of nature, activities, and general Nature Manitoba history.
The situation poses questions of what creates value, and is it worth spending money on? How much is too much to digitize everything? Which film pieces will add value and/or which type of content would be usable in the decades to come?
Just like collecting seeds from our gardens to preserve for the next growing season, we need more information to finalize a plan of what makes sense to digitally archive now or in the future.
To assist with this project, would you have:
- A 16mm projector we could borrow to review the films?
- A slide projector we could borrow?
- A Winnipeg Film Group membership which would allow us to access resources?
- Knowledge of the films content or creation context?
If so, please reach out to info@naturemanitoba.ca