The Federated Women’s Institutes of Ontario (FWIO) have completed their three-year project to digitize 225,000 pages of the Tweedsmuir Community History Books, thanks to a $38,303 grant received in 2016 from Library and Archives Canada’s Documentary Heritage Communities Program.
According to FWIO, the Tweedsmuir Community History Books “capture and preserve local community history.”
These collections, with many starting in 1947, contain the history of a local community and can include farm and family histories, biographies, and photos.
Among the books digitized are those from women’s institutes as as far north as Cochrane in the northeast and Kenora in the northwest, down to beyond London in southwestern Ontario, and the Ottawa Valley in the east.
The public can freely access the Virtual Archives at http://collections.fwio.on.ca/search. As well, all the records can be found through the portal http://search.ourontario.ca.
Despite all this work, there is still a lot of work to be done.
A summary about the project indicates about half of the documents have not yet been opened to the public as they need to be reviewed for any privacy concerns, and this will happen over the next year or two.
As well, there are still many more books to be digitized. There is already a waiting list for digitizing from branches, districts, and holding organizations.
Besides the 2016 grant, the FWIO received $100,000/yr for the last 3 years to continue digitizing. The 2016 grant set up the platform and tested out the digitizing logistics.
We are very thankful for Library and Archives Canada’s funding. This would not have been done without them.