The Reepham Archive will soon have the software needed to digitally record the town’s wonderful collection of old documents, photographs, maps and publications.
As this is done, it will be possible for anyone interested in family or property history in the local area to search the collection by names, places and dates. We will also be able to catalogue and store high-quality digital copies of our photographs, maps and drawings so that these too can be easily located and reproduced. Perhaps most useful of all it will be possible to search and study Reepham’s history online from anywhere in the world.
However, this will require a huge amount of work, mostly quite routine office jobs that many of us will be very familiar with, such as copying, typing, inputting data and even filing (professors not required). If you would like to be part of this project, please let the archive team know through Gill Wheatley in the Bircham Centre, or through the contact details on the Reepham Society website. We hope to make it possible for volunteers to contribute from home, if they wish.
The Reepham Archive is usually open from 10 am to 12 noon on the first Saturday and Wednesday of each month (or by arrangement). However, because the first Saturday in January 2016 will fall on the 2nd of the month, the Archive will not open on that date, but on Wednesday 6 January and Saturday 9 January.
Finally, we must offer a huge “thank you” to the trustees of the Bircham Centre, to the Reepham Society, to Reepham Town Council and to Margaret Hemmings, vice president of the Reepham Society, for their generous support without which Reepham’s digital archive project could not have come about.
Mike Cowdrey, Reepham Archive