Scan-a-thon in Halifax helps make images from the past more accessible | CBC News
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People in Halifax were able to digitize their historical photographs on Sunday and share them publicly as part of an initiative by the Halifax municipal archives.
The archives held a Scan-a-thon at the Halifax Central Library for members of the public to bring in treasured photographs, slides and negatives that showed local history.
Municipal archivist Susan McClure said the archives are looking for any historical photos, including neighbourhoods, construction projects, and pictures connected to the railway.
McClure said Halifax is changing constantly and having a record of the past is important.
“It’s not just about nostalgia,” she said.
“It’s for understanding what life was like for people … and the background for why decisions were made and how things have changed.”
McClure said the scanned images from Sunday will be available on the archive’s website and database, joining around 30,000 images already available.
She said people from all over the world use the archives to research genealogy or to gather background for books that document important events in Halifax’s history.
According to McClure, six people turned up for the scan-a-thon.
She said one man, Jeff Ward, came in with a collection of more images than could be scanned in one day. She said arrangements are being made for him to come back to have the entire collection scanned.
Ward, a retired planner, said he has been acquiring photographs attributed to certain photographers.
On Sunday, he was at the library with a collection of about 30 railway-related photographs taken by Wallace Robinson MacAskill just prior to the Halifax Explosion in 1917. MacAskill was a prominent photographer at the time.
He said the photographs appear to have been taken for Canadian National Railways and may have been in their files in Montreal or Toronto before ending up on eBay where he found them,
The photographs show people working on the railway cut and the related bridges under construction and just after construction.
“A very significant part of Halifax’s nature, its makeup, is the rail line and the bridges that go across them,” Ward said.
McClure said Sunday’s event was meant to generate publicity, but the archive will accept material for its collection at any time.
People who want to contribute can email or phone the archive and bring in their material to have it scanned and returned to them.
She said it is important that people include tags and descriptions on their images to help people identify them in the future.
“We know people have a lot of great material in their homes that need to be preserved,” she said.
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