The Saskatchewan Council for Archives and Archivists yesterday launched MemorySask: the Saskatchewan Archival Information Network, which is described as a database of descriptions of archival material held in Saskatchewan archives.
MemorySask also hosts descriptions from archival repositories in Nunavut.
The site is a work in progress, with new descriptions being added regularly.
Browse or search by keyword
But there’s more than archival descriptions in this database.
In addition to searching by archival descriptions, you can browse names, archival institutions, subjects, places, and digital objects or you can conduct a search by keyword. The advanced search has a range of filters to help further limit the results.
A keyword search of armed forces, for example, produces 226 results. Selecting Images under the Media Type filter in the left margin reveals 159 photos.
Searching for photos
Search for the name of a town or city.
If your ancestors lived in Biggar, a search for images of the city’s name will result in more than 3,200 hits. The number of images can be narrowed down by a range of dates, perhaps to the period when your relatives were there.
While you may not find a photo of your ancestors, you will most likely find photos of what the city, town or region looked like during a certain period of time, including images of streets, schools, and the railway station. (A simple search of school produced 1,948 photos.)
The photos you find will give you a sense of what life was like where your relatives lived, the streets they may have walked on, and schools they may have attended — perfect for understanding and illustrating your family history.
When you find a photo, click on it to see the caption and other information. In the details below each photo, you will find the terms that govern its use, reproduction and publication. If you don’t see the words, Public Domain, or instructions on how to credit the photo, you must ask for permission to use it.
While I found many photos in the public domain, selecting Public Domain in the Copyright Status filter in advanced search produced zero results even though that shouldn’t have been the case. This could be a database glitch that will be resolved. For now, I’ll leave that filter untouched and just read the photo’s details for copyright info.
After exploring this site, if you don’t have any relatives who lived in Saskatchewan, you’ll want to find some.
A link to MemorySask can also be found under Canada in my Genealogy Research Toolbox.
