Museum collection available to view online
May 16, 2019 | In the PressFrom Northern News (https://www.northernnews.ca/news/local-news/museum-collection-available-to-view-online)
May is museum month in Ontario, and to celebrate, the museum of Northern History is bringing its collections into the 21st century – by making them available online and accessible to the public.
The museum’s diverse collection of over 15,000 artifacts includes photographs, paintings, clothing and textiles, toys, tools, glassware, and many industrial and domestic artifacts that illustrate life in Kirkland Lake from the early 1900’s to present day. These items were once only available to those who visited the museum in person, but are now there for anyone with an internet connection to search, see, and interact with.
The Museum’s Past Perfect Online website has over 9,000 searchable records from the Photograph and Artifact collections.
Currently less than one tenth of the Museum’s collections have been scanned or photographed, but many records have an image of the object or photograph available for viewing. New images continue to be added to the website on a weekly basis, and an estimated 300 images of artifacts will be available for viewing by the end of August 2016. Several thousand more records from the Archives and Library collections will be included with the website in 2017.
The benefits go beyond access. A digitized archive collection also serves as an educational tool. Teachers can access the collections with ease to enrich lessons, or students with their research. It also enhances the audience experience as visitors are able to access items of their choice. New and existing visitors can now share their favourite artifacts online with friends and family through an email, or social media with a Facebook like or a tweet.
In recent years, the Museum of Northern History has made it easier for audiences to engage and interact with the collections and the heritage of the Kirkland Lake area, from virtual exhibits to content created for social media sites such as YouTube and Facebook.
This online presence gives people the chance to discover the objects and images that help tell the community’s story to a local and worldwide audience.
To explore the Museum’s collections, visit museumkl.pastperfectonline.com or call the museum at 568-8800 for more information.
