The Reach Gallery Museum Abbotsford has received a $6,000 grant that will go toward another year of digitizing the city’s rich history.
This is the museum’s fifth year of funding from the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre’s BC History Digitization Program.
Kris Foulds, collections manager at The Reach, said the money will go towards digitizing an additional 3,000 historic images from a collection donated by the Abbotsford News and should bring the total of publicly accessible images to 24,000 by February 2015.
The Reach archives is the only source of the Abbotsford News images and the only online photo archives in Abbotsford. The News does not maintain an image archive but has instead entrusted The Reach to conserve and share these images with the public. As the city’s longest existing community newspaper, the Abbotsford News’ photographers have chronicled the city’s history for more than 90 years.
The digitized historical images have been used by local authors, for collector car show awards and, recently, by an Abbotsford restaurants for its new sports lounge and the Abbotsford Downtown Business Association for its street banners.
The Reach uses images regularly in its heritage exhibits and complements them with pieces from its material culture collection of 5,000 plus artifacts.
The Reach Gallery Museum is located at 32388 Veterans Way. For more information, visit thereach.ca.