Donating to the Archive

You are more than welcome to donate items to the Them Days Archive at any time.  If you’d like nothing more than to get rid of some old stuff hanging around your house, and you know some of the papers and photos you want to get rid of could be useful for somebody else, please consider donating those items to Them Days.

We can’t take just anything, however. It needs to be Labrador-related, and appropriate for an archive. Archives differ from libraries in that the items in an archive haven’t been published and aren’t widely available. Archives differ from museums in that the ‘items’ we store are thing that contain information–like documents, journals, photos, audio recording, etc. As much as we love sealskin boots, we can’t take them because they are artifacts more appropriate for a museum. 

That said, Them Days also maintains a reference library and vertical files on Labrador topics. If you have Labrador books, magazines that contain articles about Labrador, or genealogy information like obituary and birth announcement clippings from the newspaper, funeral programs, etc., we would be interested in these too.

If you donate items to our archive, you will be asked to sign a form stating that you are giving your item to Them Days, and transferring ownership to us, and all the rights that come with it, like the ability to publish it in our magazine. We can make copies for you if you wish. Remember, by donating items to Them Days, they will be kept safe and accessible for generations to come. You and your descendants will be able to look at them years down the road, and know that they have been kept in the very best of hands, safe from fire, flood, and mould–not to mention relatives that borrow and never return! If you are hesitant to donate your physical object, we do offer the ability to scan your items so that you can keep your item and we keep the digital object (and you get a copy of the scans, too).

If your organization is interested in donating materials to the archives, you might want to take a look at this Guide to Archiving for Community Organizations put together by the Halifax Regional Municipality Archives.