City of Calgary's extensive archives now accessible through new online portal

The new Archives Research Portal allows people to search the City of Calgary's extensive collection from anywhere they have an internet connection.

The archives date back to the 1870s and are available to all Calgarians.

Kristine Lehew, an archivist with the city, says most heavily requested items have been fully digitized.

"That's heavily used things people are constantly asking us for but the rest of it is going to lead you to a description that will tell you what's in the file, who made it, the context, the content of what you're going to be looking at," she said.

Lehew says that will allow people to decide if they want to request more information from the archives department and prepare it for in-person viewing.

"You're going to say, 'I really want to look at that file' and you're going to come down to the archives and look at the file yourself, in person," she said.

"Which is kind of fun. You get to explore and discover it yourself."

Susanne Clark, the archives co-ordinator, says the city has records that fill upward of 20,000 cubic-foot banker's boxes stored in two locations.

If all those boxes were placed end to end, they'd span close to six kilometres.

"The earliest records we have date back to the 1870s but they predominantly tend to start in the 1880s," she said.

"We preserve the memory of Calgary and so it's important for us to understand our past and why we did things in our past so we can learn from it and preserve it for future generations so we know how we came to be who we are today."

Clark says some of her favourite archived material are letters from citizens to the mayor or councillors dating back a century.

"It's interesting to see over history how many things have changed but some things haven't changed," Clark said.

"The things that upset us now and that we get really passionate about are things that people were passionate about generations ago. Potholes, roads, snow removal, those things have been throughout time what people care about."

Josh Traptow heads Heritage Calgary, where he and his team regularly access city archives to learn the history of Calgary's older buildings.

"It's a large part of our work. Our researchers that we contract to do research on the inventory always will reach out to the city archives," he said.

While he and his team are familiar with the archive process, he's excited about the new portal, which will allow him to access data from his office.

"The fact that a lot of that (is now) digitized and will be digitized in the next little while, that'll make that information so much more accessible not only to our researchers but to all Calgarians," he said.

Clark is excited to share more of the information held in archives with Calgarians.

"Historically, not many people have been familiar with what we have and would make their way to come and see us," she said.

"But we are hoping that with the launch of the portal, we'll see a broader spectrum of Calgarians coming to use our facilities."

Learn more about the Archives Research Portal at https://www.calgary.ca/content/www/en/home/info-requests/archives.html.