St. Andrews, NB —The Charlotte County Archives (CCA), located in St. Andrews, has just launched an
exciting new website and has adopted a vibrant new look and feel. These initiatives will help citizens
around the province, and beyond, access new digital files and photos with the click of a button.
Board Chair Franklin Cardy says of these developments, “We have been working towards making our
holdings accessible to the public over the past year and our new website is the culmination of that work.
Increasingly, people want to be able to view documents online, either for research purposes, to discover
more about their roots, or to learn more about our rich history. And during this pandemic it is safer and
easier for people to learn more through online searches.”
The initial funding for the website was a $5,000 grant from the Provincial Department of Tourism,
Heritage and Culture — Museum Services. This Digital World and Social Media grant enabled CCA to
contract the services of Loyalist City Web Design to create a beautiful and functional new website,
where you can see what collections CCA has in its environmentally protected vault. You can read lists of
church records, microfilm, and library holdings. You can also read about items of genealogical interest
and see a myriad of archival photos. https://ccarchives.ca/
A second grant, from Young Canada Works, is funding an internship focused on the creation of a digital
vault for the storage of digitized documents. This will provide guidelines for accessioning, and training
for community partners on how to collect and index holdings. Keith MacKnight has been hired as the
intern and, working with Archives Manager Heather Wilson and Board members, he will showcase the
digital resources of the Archives. Hundreds of new digitized records and 25,000 digitized photos show
the readiness of the CCA to further adapt to COVID-19 protocols.
Graphic designer Elaine Wilson, working with the Archives positioning committee, has designed the
strong new logo, which appears on the new website and will be used in future communications and
signage.
In February, CCA hosted a Heritage Fair at the Garcelon Centre, where like-minded archival and historic
community groups encouraged the Archives to become a hub for all such groups in the County. A new
listing on the CCA web site will unite these groups in a shared goal of preserving the past, including
events happening as recently as yesterday. The Charlotte County Archives encourages people to label
their own digital photos clearly for future users and invites citizens from Charlotte County to consider
sending items of historic interest to the Archives for careful preservation.
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For more information, please contact Heather Wilson (contact@ccarchives.ca) or Franklin Cardy,
fcardy@sympatico.nb.ca