The Whyte Museum of the Canadian Rockies is looking to put Banff’s two local newspapers on microfilm to preserve them into the future.
Banff council has indicated a willingness to fund $8,560 of the $17,120 project, but a final decision on funding won’t be made until it deliberates the 2016 operating budget later this month.
Whyte Museum officials say the Rocky Mountain Outlook and the Crag and Canyon are irreplaceable, with known complete collections limited to the Whyte and the Alberta Legislative Library in Edmonton.
“I’m very passionate about our newspapers and it’s vital we preserve them,” said Elizabeth Kundert-Cameron, the Whyte’s librarian and manager of reference services.
“Our local newspapers are a weekly snapshot of the people and life and issues of Banff. Even the advertisements tell a story. The newspapers tell us about our history.”
The Crag and Canyon has already been microfilmed from 1900 to 1990 and the Whyte now wants to concentrate on the period from 1990 to 2010.
The Whyte also wants to microfilm the Outlook, which began publication in September 2001.
Kundert-Cameron said with constant use of the newspaper, wear and tear is of the utmost concern, noting newspaper is very acidic and becomes brittle within a few short years, so handling exacerbates the problem.
She said microfilming the original newspaper and limiting access to the original is the best way to ensure newspapers continue to be accessible to all researchers, adding microfilm is the archival standard.
“You are probably wondering, as everybody is, why microfilm and why not just digitize? The 35mm microfilm is still considered the best archival standard for preservation. It’s film and it’s proven to last hundreds of years,” said Kundert-Cameron.
“Even if all the software goes kaput and there’s no computer software to read a digital file, if you put it on microfilm you can put it up and read it with a magnifying glass. The beauty of microfilm is it’s also possible to digitize at a later date.”
Kundert-Cameron said the owners of both newspapers provide limited archival documentation, in the form of digitization.
“The issue is if we can get them preserved at the Whyte Museum as well, we have control over our history,” she said. “We don’t have to wait for the company to put them up at their will, or take them down.”
Kundert-Cameron said the number of researchers who use the archives is approximately 4,500 people a year.
“Without question, besides our photographs, the local newspapers are the most heavily used resource in the archives/library,” she said.
Mayor Karen Sorensen and Councillor Stavros Karlos did not support spending the money on the project.
Both said they love newspapers and value their role, but indicated they struggle to support funding the project when the Town of Banff has still not been able to find the money to archive its own documents.
“I sincerely appreciate the Whyte’s desire to do this and archive our newspapers and I think it’s a great project. I believe there is probably some municipal responsibility to make sure our newspapers are archived,” said Sorensen.
“That being said, administration has asked us more than once to fund the archiving of our own documents and we have never seen our way clear to do that, and until we solve our own problem, I would be struggling to fund another.”
