New cultural institution proposed for Sault Ste. Marie

A new archives building, offering public access to local historical treasures for the first time, is being proposed by staff at the Sault Ste. Marie Public Library.

The proposed historical archives structure would house materials currently stored in the basement of the downtown Centennial Library.

It could also be a multi-agency initiative, helping to resolve archival storage problems at other institutions including the Art Gallery of Algoma and the Canadian Bushplane Heritage Centre, said Roxanne Toth-Rissanen, director of libraries.

In June, City Council asked the Art Gallery of Algoma to disclose its intentions regarding 600 boxes of animation cels valued at as much as $11 million.

The cels have been stored in an assortment of venues across the city, none offering museum-quality environmental conditions.

The Canadian Bushplane Heritage Centre recently lost its archive room when the space was taken over by Northern Superior Brewing Company.

The new city archive is proposed in a draft three-year strategic plan that was presented to the library board last night but has so far not been debated or approved.

"It's a very large project, having a community archives, but that's something that we're interested in," Toth-Rissanen said.

"When you have an archives collection, there's an understanding that when someone donates to archives, that you keep them. It's not like you can weed archives," she said.

"Organizations that have archives have to be very careful about how they accept items, because you permanently have to have a house for them."

Toth-Rissanen isn't sure that the new archives would necessarily be built at the Centennial Library location.

Approximately a decade ago, the library initially floated the idea of a city archive that would have been located adjacent to the downtown library, on the river side.

That is no longer likely because of a road constructed there.

It would be necessary for any archive location to be at least three feet above the water table, Toth-Rissanen said.

As archives are currently set up in the city, there's no opportunity for random discoveries.

"There's no chance of discovery," Toth-Rissanen said. "You can't just happen upon something. You have to know what you're looking for and go search it. There's no chance of just stumbling across something because it's just not organized that way."

The draft strategic plan also includes a covered outdoor reading area with comfortable seating that would most likely be on the south side of Centennial Library.

Toth-Rissanen is also proposing a self-checkout system.

"That's definitely something that we would like to have," she told SooToday.

But one common prerequisite to self-checkout is having all books and other items in the library collection tagged with RFID (radio-frequency identification) chips.

The draft plan calls for having a self-checkout unit ready for use by February 28, 2017.

Toth-Rissanen also disclosed last night that the Sault Ste. Marie Public Library has applied for a Canada 150 federal grant that, if approved, would allow renovation of the library's bathrooms to make them accessible, as well as replacing carpeting on the main floor and reorganizing reference and service desks.

On September 28, library officials will release results of a NORDIK Institute study  on the value of libraries in Northern Ontario.