There is now a lot more room to store Lambton County’s history.
The Lambton Room has recently doubled the size of the archives for the county, but Archivist Dana Thorne says they didn’t have to build a single room.
The key is giant mobile shelving units with a single aisle. You find the material in the aisle you want to access by moving the rolling shelves over.
“This gives us twice as much space,” says Thorne adding the shelving units allow them to grow sideways and up, since they are much taller than the old units.
There is also an area designed specifically for rolled maps, a spot Thorne calls an “organizers dream” and shelf after shelf of film negatives from local newspapers.
While the $200,000 renovation went well, Thorne says it wasn’t easy. About 900 boxes had to be taken off the old shelves and returned to the new unit in the exact order.
She adds the “happy by product” of the project is staff has been able to generate lists of reference material which they will soon put online.