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arly in 2021, the Vice Chair of The Friends of Fort York & E Garrison Common, Andrew Stewart, and City Historian Richard Gerrard formed a small working group to address the significant number of fort-related archaeological records which have accumulated in the City’s possession and which are badly in need of digitization. The Fort York Archaeological Digitization Project was born. Its mission is the ongoing digitization of archival records from 60+ years of archaeological research on site. The materials include reports, field notes, maps, plans, drawings and scanned archaeological slides. The idea is to link the new digitized material to original 35mm slides, which have already been digitized by board director Sid Calzavara. In the longer term, part of the initiative will be aimed at developing management and access strategies for the archaeological collections held in trust by Museums & Heritage Services. In order to advance the project, a series of online meetings
were held among Stewart, Gerrard, Neil Brochu, The first item has now been digitized and then the City’s interim Chief Curator, and Robert is available on the archive’s Friends of Fort Bell, the Friends’ Executive Director. The group’s York page at https://archive.org/details/ discussions led them to Internet Archive Canada friendsoffortyork. It is Excavation, Mitigation, and its team at the John Robarts Library (aka and Research: A Summary Report of the Fort Book). Archeological Resource at Historic Fort York, by The Internet Archive is an American digital Catherine F. Webb, published by the Toronto library with the stated mission of “universal access Historical Board in 1994. This item was chosen to all knowledge.” It provides free public access because it summarizes all the archaeological to collections of digitized materials, including work that had been done at the fort up until websites, software applications and games, music, 1994. movies and videos and millions of books. The This project is a real service to Toronto advantage of using the Internet Archive is the History Museums, which is chronically assurance of quality of image, as well as its open under-budgeted and under-staffed for this access and longevity. kind of important museum and library work. In October project team members met at the Robarts Library It continues the tradition that The Friends, under the direction of with Andrea Mills, Executive Director of Internet Archive Canada Nancy Baines, established 20 years ago when we began organizing and Alex White, Operations Manager, Internet Archive Canada, Fort York’s books and papers and incorporating them into a where they were treated to a demonstration of state-of-the-art properly catalogued library and resource centre, today housed scanning equipment and an explanation of the digitization and in the Blue Barracks. archiving services available through the Internet Archive.
were held among Stewart, Gerrard, Neil Brochu, The first item has now been digitized and then the City’s interim Chief Curator, and Robert is available on the archive’s Friends of Fort Bell, the Friends’ Executive Director. The group’s York page at https://archive.org/details/ discussions led them to Internet Archive Canada friendsoffortyork. It is Excavation, Mitigation, and its team at the John Robarts Library (aka and Research: A Summary Report of the Fort Book). Archeological Resource at Historic Fort York, by The Internet Archive is an American digital Catherine F. Webb, published by the Toronto library with the stated mission of “universal access Historical Board in 1994. This item was chosen to all knowledge.” It provides free public access because it summarizes all the archaeological to collections of digitized materials, including work that had been done at the fort up until websites, software applications and games, music, 1994. movies and videos and millions of books. The This project is a real service to Toronto advantage of using the Internet Archive is the History Museums, which is chronically assurance of quality of image, as well as its open under-budgeted and under-staffed for this access and longevity. kind of important museum and library work. In October project team members met at the Robarts Library It continues the tradition that The Friends, under the direction of with Andrea Mills, Executive Director of Internet Archive Canada Nancy Baines, established 20 years ago when we began organizing and Alex White, Operations Manager, Internet Archive Canada, Fort York’s books and papers and incorporating them into a where they were treated to a demonstration of state-of-the-art properly catalogued library and resource centre, today housed scanning equipment and an explanation of the digitization and in the Blue Barracks. archiving services available through the Internet Archive.
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