Course:ARST575K/LIBR539H/Maple Ridge Museum and Community Archives

The Maple Ridge Museum and Community Archives is a museum and archives hybrid institution located in Maple Ridge, Canada. The institution is focused on the collection, preservation and sharing of the material culture and stories of historic Maple Ridge. Their mandate states that they seek: "To provide current, former, and potential residents of our community with the means to make our history their own through the collection, preservation, and sharing of our historic images, documents, and artifacts."  The archives in this institution are donated, arranged, and held in trust for the community.

Maple Ridge Museum and Community Archives

Type	Community Archives
Website	http://mapleridgemuseum.org/
Maple Ridge Museum Address	22520 116th Avenue Maple Ridge, BC
Haney House Address	11612 224th Avenue Maple Ridge, BC
Phone	1-604-463-5311
Maple Ridge Museum Hours	Wednesday to Sunday 10:00am-4:00pm
Haney House Hours	Sunday 10:00am-4:00pm

Organization and History

The Maple Ridge Museum and Community Archives were a result of community interest, which began with the Maple Ridge Historical Society. The Maple Ridge Historical Society began in 1957, and was created with the purpose of offering current, former, and potential residents of the access to preserved materials related to the community and to create a sense of identity and pride both within and outside our community. The historical society eventually evolved into the creation of the museum and community archives due to a desire to preserve community heritage of all kinds.

The museum collection began as an important community collection of objects, photographs, and documents, which did not become displayed to the community until it was put on display in the community public library in 1967.  While the museum's materials had been accumulated in years prior, the museum did not have a permanent location until the opening of the Haney House museum location in 1984. Currently, the Maple Ridge Museum operates in two locations: Haney House Museum and at the Port Haney Brick and Tile building.

In 1984, after spending 10 years in the Maple Ridge Library, the archives was moved into it's own specialized location: in the former manager’s house for Port Haney Brick and Tile. Situated in Jim Hadgkiss Park overlooking the Fraser River, the archives collects, preserves and shares the culture and stories of historic Maple Ridge. The archives, according to the current executive director (Shea Henry), began their existence at about the same time and parallel to the museum, and was also created and developed under the Maple Ridge Historical Society.  The archives were separate but largely maintained and accrued by the community and the historical society, being processed, arranged, and described primarily by volunteer community members throughout its existence.

Archival Holdings

Since 2002, the archival holdings of the Maple Ridge Museum and Community Archives have been housed on premises at the brickyard office, a structure original to Port Haney Brick and Tile. Here, they are housed primarily within a vault and in the surrounding room, with plans to modify the space to accommodate more accruals.

Fonds

The archives are comprised of fonds from a variety of donors related to the community, including community organizations, schools, businesses, and private individuals. As of October 2021, the archives has in its custody 170 distinct fonds. While many of the records are paper documents, the archives regularly receives graphical records which are digitized and catalogued as both archival records and museum holdings; the museum portion of the organization also houses other artifacts and ephemera which are not easily housed in document boxes in the brickyard office.

Accessions to the archives are acquired on a purely by-donation basis, with the donor reaching out to the Maple Ridge Museum and Community Archives. Accessions are sometimes obtained by a museum representative visiting the donor or institution but are most often brought directly to the museum by donors and (occasionally) deposited anonymously on the porch of the museum.

A great number of the holdings represent the fonds of families from the historical Port Haney area, mostly notably those of the Mussallem family (including the records of Dr. Helen Kathleen Mussallem, Ed.D, CC, FRCN, DGStJ). Others may be accruals into fonds of the various historical and current districts of the region: Hammond, Port Haney, Haney, Ruskin, Whonnock, Websters Corners, Kanaka, The Ridge, Yennadon, and Albion.

Access

The holdings of the Maple Ridge Museum and Community Archives are currently accessible mostly in physical form. Each fonds is designated a unique number in the archival database, which is maintained separately from the museum's artefacts directory. Previous practice at the archives has been to accept new accruals into one of the pre-existing fonds as a new file unless there has not been an appropriate overarching fonds into which to organize it. With the appointment of the archives' first dedicated archivist in 2021, the arrangement and description of the fonds is being reassessed to ensure accessibility and continuity in the holdings as well as compliance with Canadian archival description standards.

While a small number of finding aids have been added to the online database MemoryBC, the museum currently lacks a publicly accessible catalogue of its finding aids. As part of the Maple Ridge Historical Society's mandate is to allow the community to maintain control over its own past, the archivist stresses that a priority is to create a publicly searchable database and reading space. The museum also now digitizes many of their new acquisitions, allowing for easier access and potential for an online database. Given the personal nature of many donated records, the museum is amenable to a postcustodial model for those donors who wish to retain the physical original. As Zavala et al describe, shifting the paradigm of records custody to a more open model has become a central theme of the conversation around community archives; the archives is dedicated to ensuring a sustainable and respectful relationship with its donors and the community at large.

Community Engagement

As a whole, the Maple Ridge Museum and Community Archives engages in many examples of community engagement and programming: they offer school, community group, and online tours; online learning activities; Music on the Wharf; and help host Murder Mystery Nights and Heritage Tea events at their sister museum, Haney House. Two public-facing programs that relate directly to the archives are educational outreach activities and the Family History Group.

Educational Outreach

Maple Ridge Museum and Community Archives offers a wide array of in-school presentations for all grade levels. Presentations can be held in classrooms or other event spaces depending on the number of students attending and include a PowerPoint presentation combined with other necessary materials depending on the subject of the presentation. Subject areas vary widely from local natural disasters to neighbourhood histories and more. A particularly archival presentation, Finding Granny in the Archives, is designed for older students to learn how to engage with archival material and conduct primary research through the challenging lens of researching women in historical documents.

Another educational program geared toward learning during the pandemic is the Museum's Online Learning Resources. These resources are broken into sections for Kindergarten through Grade 6 and Grade 7 through Grade 12; they range in topics from pioneer crafts, wildlife and plants, LGBTQ+ history, and other local history subjects. Several activities from the Grade 7 - 12 section introduce the use of archives and primary source documents: History Analysis - Primary Sources, which allows students to read and answer questions using primary source documents from the archives, and Memoir Activities, which introduce students to primary source materials from the memoirs of local historical figures.

Additionally, Maple ridge Museum and Community Archives allows classroom reproduction of their digitized archival photo collection which is available on their Flickr site.

Family History Group

The Maple Ridge Historical Society hosts a standing committee called the Family History Group, which is dedicated to sharing family history research. The committee was founded in 1999, meets monthly, and publishes a bi-monthly newsletter which includes reviews of resources, training and events, Maple Ridge history, and other helpful articles for family historians, and frequently features archival reproductions from both the Maple Ridge Museum and Community Archives as well as other institutions.

Institutional Relationships

Maple Ridge Public Library

As the Museum's collections were housed in the Maple Ridge Public Library from 1967 to 1984, the Museum has always enjoyed a healthy partnership with the Library. While the Maple Ridge Museum and Community Archives did lean on the Maple Ridge Public Library initially as a host institution, they eventually outgrew the space and sought further independence from the Library, opting to gain more autonomy on their own terms, a phenomenon common of community heritage institutions as mentioned by Flinn, Stevens, and Shepherd. As the Community Archives are not open to researchers, the Maple Ridge Public Library maintains a copy of approximately 1200 research files containing information from the Community Archives to facilitate research of local history.

Haney House Museum

Haney House Museum is also run by the Maple Ridge Historical Society and serves as the Maple Ridge Museum and Community Archives' sister institution. It is a family home built in 1883 and structurally renovated in 1979 that is fully furnished with original artifacts and furniture to tell the story of the Haney family and life in Maple Ridge through various eras represented in each room. The two museums share a website which advertises the many programs and events hosted at Haney House, such as Culture Days, Halloween, Spring Break, Murder Mystery Nights, and Afternoon Tea.

Conclusion

The Maple Ridge Museum and Community Archives demonstrates many aspects of what has currently been discussed in academic archival literature, which comes with similar questions and concerns about how these types of community archives fit in with broader archival theory. In fact, based on what the Maple Ridge Museum and Community Archives states about their goals, ideas, and mandate, this organization defines itself almost exactly as Andrew Flinn describes as having a focus on the content of the collections with a focus on them being related to the community or members of the community. Overall, it seems that the Maple Ridge Museum and Community Archives is focused on not just community-centred content and acquisition, but also on community connections. As Flinn would point out, this institution is one that continues to blur the distinction between materials held in a museum and those held in an archives – by the very nature of the materials held in this institution, there is overlap between their museum collection and their archival fonds. The Maple Ridge Museum and Community Archives is indicative on many of the benefits – and difficulties – of such hybrid, community-driven institutions.