Week 3, Thing 8: You can view them online!

Access is currently a buzz word in the museum, library, and archives world. The feeling that records should be available online is one that has encouraged many institutions to undertake massive digitization projects to create electronic copies of archival documents, photographs, and other items so that they may be added to the internet for all the world to see (or at least anyone who is interested).

The Whitby Public Library and Archives is one of those institutions and they are in the process of making their photograph collection available online. On a daily basis, photographs are scanned and uploaded to a host website called Our Ontario. Having the photographs online means that more people have access to them and can view them from the comfort of their homes. The website also contains some Web 2.0 features like the ability to comment on the photographs and even to send images as electronic postcards to friends!