Archive visit and Monday...?

I was also at the archives this afternoon and found some good stuff and talked to some of the archivists. Apparently all the McKenzie documents are on site and we can request them, but the woman I talked to didn't really know about taking photos of them or what the rules were. John should be able to help us with that, so perhaps we should start thinking about the stuff we want to get photos of, particularly the contracts. I like the look of the Royal Navy papers too.

Most of my time was spent looking for images in the collections, and I found some great ones, in particular a great one of Verney that I believe is online (he's in his full uniform, with glorious mutton chops). I also found that familiar image of the picnic party on the Craigflower bridge, and I have a suspicion that Verney might be one of the mentioned "naval officers" from the caption, it looks like him, but the year isn't cited. Nonetheless, it's a great picture showing the farm int he background.

There is also a good candidate image for a mark-up, if we chose to do one. It's taken from across the water, showing nearly all the buildings very clearly, and goes well with McKenzie's sketch of the place of the buildings. Unfortunately the sketch is somewhat lacking in details, but I think we could pull it off if we have to. I still tend to think it might seem tacked-on though.

There is also a dearth of portraits of the McKenzies. I mentioned before that I thought we might want to include one of the McKenzie children on the site, and Agnes seems like a good pick. There are a lot of letters and other papers from her, quite a few pictures of her at different ages, and I think it will lend insight into the children and the school, which we probably otherwise can't get into too much.

There were also some great images of the Irvin(e)/(g) family, particularly a really good one showing the family at Rose Bank. There weren't any of the labourers, but I think Taryn might have found some. Is this the Melrose we're looking for? http://www.bcarchives.gov.bc.ca/cgi-bin/www2i/.visual/img_med/dir_137/f_07393.gif

Taryn; I checked the steam engine manual and the note along with it says 1852. So it's looking good.

I'm sure there's more but I can't think of it now...

And Scott, I was talking to Taryn today and we were questioning whether or not we have any purpose at the City Archives on Monday. Perhaps we could just meet for a team meeting instead. What do you guys think?

I'm working on the framework of the website now, I'll hopefully ahve something we can look over soon. And if you guys have any ideas on a title, or colour scheme, or design elements, or find any photos, etc, please remember to bring them up, as right now I'm just putting in place-holders for images.

We need to get that painting scanned ASAP. I asked the archivist about getting larger images or ones that weren't online but she didn't seem to know that either. All she kept saying was they were $10 apiece. No way!



-Dan