View our archive at museum
We have now completed our year-long project to preserve and digitize our archival collection of documents, photos, maps and correspondence dating back to 1987, and researchers can browse this material at the Kimberley Heritage Museum.
Marie Stang, administrator of the Kimberley Heritage Museum, receives a hard disk
containing the complete Nature Park archive.
Planning for our archive project began in spring 2018 when Heritage BC grant funding was secured. Volunteers conducted a number of preliminary sorting sessions to weed out duplicates and irrelevant documents. A newspaper article published in the Kimberley Bulletin in July 2018 helped to uncover additional archival documents, and over the summer months society volunteers sorted the entire collection into 17 categories organized by year.
Categories included such topics as correspondence, meeting minutes, event promotion, interface fire management, and policy discussions. Eight issues and events were identified that may be of interest to researchers, including KNPS involvement in the Forest Crowne housing development, Trickle Creek golf course, logging activities, creation of the KNPS management plan, and formation of the Horse Barn Valley Interpretive Forest. In addition to the paper files, digital files dating back 10 years (with some from as far back as 1999) were included in the initial assessment.
During the sorting process we identified 17 categories and eight issues
that may be of interest to researchers.
Nicole Tremblay, a Nelson-based project archivist working on contract with the Society, began her work in fall 2018 with an initial review of the hard copy documents and the electronic flash drive. Over the fall and winter months she catalogued the documents, eliminated duplication, prepared a finding aid to assist with document retrieval, and scanned the entire collection onto a 4-terabyte external hard drive. Where possible all records were sorted by date, and each record includes a brief description of the scope and content.
Kent Goodwin sorting documents dating back to 1987.
“We believe the results of our work will be a valuable addition to the Kimberley historical record,” said Kent Goodwin, outgoing president of the Nature Park Society, in a recent Kimberley Bulletin article. “This project was funded in part by the Columbia Basin Trust and Heritage BC through the Built Heritage Grants, and we would like to express our sincere appreciation to these organizations for their support of this important initiative.”
Kent has been president of the Kimberley Nature Park Society since 1999. He plans to step down at the end of his term in November, and the Society is now seeking candidates to fill the position.
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