Open House at the City of Ottawa Archives

Here is where we plan to be tomorrow afternoon -

"The City of Ottawa’s Central Archives invite you to its open house on Saturday, July 9 from noon to 4 p.m. at 100 Tallwood Drive, corner of Woodroffe Avenue.
Hands on family activities include genealogy workshops, clay tablet creation, building tours and magical fun. The public is also invited to view a new sculpture titled Archive in the exterior garden and meet artist Don Maynard during the open house. Mr. Maynard will be available from 2 p.m. to 4 p.m. in the lobby to discuss his work.

The Archives’ premiere exhibit, entitled, “An Archives Odyssey: making a home for the history of our communities,” will be open for viewing. The exhibit provides “a history of the City of Ottawa Archives from its humble beginnings to this beautiful state of the art facility.”

The new Central Archives has a vault that provides sufficient space for 10 years of growth, and enough space on-site to build a second vault to provide for 25 years of growth, an environmentally controlled on-site exhibit to showcase the City’s treasures, and a 200-square foot triage room to temporarily house collections that could potentially harm existing holdings.

The new building also has classroom and workshop space for school and public programming, on-site space for the Archives’ community partners, as well as a gift shop to promote public awareness of the importance of archives and generate revenue.

Background:

With its first settlement dating back to the 1790s, Ottawa is one of the oldest cities in Canada. Its archival collection is one of the most valuable holdings of information that document the development and evolution of municipal government in this area. As mandated by the provincial government, the City of Ottawa must collect and preserve its municipal records in a secure manner for public access, as well as future generations.

The collection contains photographs, microfilm, film, magnetic tapes, video and audiotapes, computer records, drawings, as well as some artefacts. Researchers, historians and the general public rely on the City’s archives as a resource for civic records, genealogy, construction history and photographs".

For more information, please visit http://www.ottawa.ca/archives

Society for German Genealogy in Eastern Europe Conference

A conference for people of German origin who are interested in the genealogy, culture and history of their ancestors who migrated through Russian, Poland, Volhynia, and surrounding area will be held in Winnipeg, Manitoba from August 12-14, 2011.

"From Whence We Came" is the theme of this year's conference, and there will be lectures given by Kathleen Kufeldt "Conducting Family Interviews and Documenting the Results", Bill Remus will give a lecture on "The German Migration to Volhynia", and Jim Blanchard will give a talk on "The Winnipeg German Community before the Great War"

The website of the society is http://www.sggee.org/. The email is convention@sggee.org