After a year of construction, the newly built addition to the Wellington County Museum and Archives will open to the public on Friday June 25th; official remarks at 11:00 am with refreshments to follow. All are welcome to attend.
This opening would not be possible without the dedicated effort of Wellington County staff, The Ventin Group Architects and CSL Construction. The beautiful landscaping has been coordinated by landscape architect Wendy Shearer.
The new facility consists of 7500 square feet of space, consisting of a storage vault, records processing, microfilm and reading rooms. Researchers will have access to nine computer workstations to search the Archives collection database and internet resources relating to family history. Eight microfilm readers are available to access a variety of resources including newspapers, census records, land abstracts and tax assessment rolls.
In addition to state-of-the-art storage and research areas, the project also included the addition of new washrooms, the renovation of Aboyne Hall and hallway and the installation of an elevator. Once the new Archives opens to the public, the previous archives location will be used for additional museum storage, a conservation lab and exhibit preparation space.
The project was first developed in 2007 as a response to the lack of storage space for the growing archival collection, and approved by Wellington County Council in 2009. Funding for the new Archives came from the Build Canada Fund in partnership with the Province of Ontario, the federal Museum Assistance Programme and the County of Wellington.
The Wellington County Museum & Archives is located 0536 Wellington Road 18, between Fergus and Elora. Admission to the Archives is free of charge; admission to the Museum galleries is by donation. For further information, please contact the Museum and Archives at 519-846-0916.
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