For the Bulletin
If you are in possession of any historical documents or photographs pertaining to the Kimberley Nature Park or Horse Barn Valley Interpretive Forest, now would be a good time to retrieve them.
The Kimberley Nature Park Society (KNPS) is collecting and organizing its historical records for a permanent archive to be housed in the Kimberley Heritage Museum. The project recently received Columbia Basin Trust funding of $4,500, and KNPS plans to hire a project archivist from the Nelson area to sort the documents and photos, catalogue them, and create a finding aid for researchers who have an interest in the history of the nature park.
“We’re pleased that Columbia Basin Trust has approved our application through its Heritage, Museum and Archive grants program. We will use the funds to catalogue and digitize our records, and the entire collection will be permanently stored on a hard drive in the Kimberley museum,” said Rod Chapman, a KNPS director. “But first we have to make sure nothing important is missing from the collection. That’s why we are appealing to everyone who has been involved with the nature park over the years to come forward with photos or documents that might have historical significance.”
Work to record and make available archival material related to the history and activities of the Kimberley Nature Park Society will be completed in two stages. In the first stage, the society has been pre-sorting paper documents collected over the winter, electronic records are being gathered and assessed, and everything is being prepared for permanent storage. When that work is complete, the boxes and electronic files will be delivered to the project archivist for cataloguing. Digitization of the entire collection will be done as a second stage.
If you have any records of the nature park you think might be of interest to future researchers, please contact Kent Goodwin, president of the KNPS, at jkgoodwin@shaw.ca or (250) 427-5404.