A grand plan to digitally preserve the thousands of precious items in Museum of the Riverina’s unique collection of local history took a small but positive step forward this week.
Wagga Wagga City Council’s MoR Manager Luke Grealy said a new A3 scanner donated to the museum would greatly assist in the digitisation of many documents, giving more people access to historic pieces.
“We have many fragile documents here that should not be handled because there is a risk they will perish further,” Mr Grealy said.
“We still want people to have access to these documents and the best way to do that is to scan them and have them available in an electronic format.
“The museum has more than 25,000 objects in our possession and about 10,000 of those are documents – each one of them is special in our region’s history. Ultimately we would love to have each item available to the public in digital form – it will be a massive job over many years to achieve this, but that is our long-term vision.”
Wagga Wagga and District Historical Society President Geoff Burch presented Mr Grealy with an Avision FB5000 A3 scanner to be used in the continuation of that process.
Mr Burch said the Society was pleased to donate the scanner as his group works closely with the Museum towards the end goal of research and education in the public’s interests.
“We have always had a great partnership with the Museum and that works to everyone’s advantage,” Mr Burch said.
“We want to help people in their research and also to educate those who want to know more about our history – it’s important our youth has access to our history, and social media is a great platform to do that.
“There is an obvious advantage to protecting and preserving original documents in electronic files, but it will also give people 24/7 access to Wagga Wagga’s history. This information becomes immediately available from anywhere around the globe.”
The Museum of the Riverina is currently operating out of the Historic Council Chambers site on the corner of Baylis and Morrow streets.
Opening times are Tuesday to Saturday 10am-4pm, and Sunday 10am-2pm.
