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.
