The hard work put into the Endangered Archives Project is now bearing fruit as the Montserrat National Trust opened an exhibition on Tuesday, March 10, 2015 with exhibits that illustrate how Montserrat is moving into gear with the latest technology in the preservation of documents.
Visiting the St Patrick’s Exhibition titled “AWE Heritage- a Digital Approach to Preserving our Heritage”, one can not help to notice how historical documents have been put in motion images and in soft copy format for easy access and preservation. The process will be a long one before all our documents from the Montserrat National Trust,the Public Library, Lands & Survey and the Registry are digitized but we are on our way into the process. This approach to preservation will be a major tool in educating the present and future generations about the history of Montserrat. Some of the documents on display include Marriage Registers of the 1820s to 1838. With the way the digitized products look, one is able to start tracing their ancestry!.
It is amazing to see some Sales Of Premises,Plans of Estates documents from around 1910 being displayed. The St Patrick’s Exhibition displays some of the processes used in conserving historical documents as paper normally tears apart and becomes brittle over a long period. On show are also the items used in digitizing and storing documents as well.
Donna Henry, who is the Exhibitions and History point person at the Trust, has already been kept busy because of the traffic into this new Exhibition. Donna has been working tirelessly with Neil How, who is a member of the Archeological and Historical Committee member, in this process.
While enjoying this very informative tour of the Exhibition you can also take part in a short quiz where you are required to name a place of person from the images available and drop your answer in the box.
With this digitization process, our children will surely have their history on their fingertips.