The Magic of Inmagic:
 by David Giesbrecht, Archivist, MHS BC
 
The Board is pleased to announce the introduction of a major electronic innovation for our Centre at Garden Park Tower. Recently we acquired an archival indexing software called InMagic, a  state of the art software commonly used for finding information in archival collections.   This software requires a very large investment of time to enter all of the relevant details so that our collection becomes electronically searchable. An implementation group of eight volunteers led by Erica Suderman are presently laying the foundation for this project.
 
With the completion of the initial training and preparations, volunteers will begin entering data in February 2006. The first set of records to be entered will pertain to BC Mennonite churches and schools. When completed, searches can be conducted by entering any word that would naturally occur in that particular record. Our hope is to have the churches and schools indexed by late summer. In addition, we have several large personal donations or fonds, and many smaller collections waiting to be processed and entered.
 
Completing this project will take several years.  The first part of the procedure is to ensure that our Centre has legal custody of the records. (If you have been a donor of materials to our Centre, you will shortly be contacted in this regard.) The next task is to arrange and describe all of our records according to the Canadian Council of Archives (RAD) standards. In all of these changes every effort will be made to protect the integrity of records entrusted to us, and where confidentiality has been requested, to ensure that any use of these records will conform to the wishes of our donors.
 
Presently some 200 people visit our Centre each month. Our concern is to provide visitors with a variety of searching options. The Inmagic software is primarily designed for archival searches. The GRANDMA database (Genealogical Registry and Database of Mennonite Ancestry) with more than 800,000 names will continue to be our main source for genealogical searching.  Our library books have been catalogued and entered into a separate software package. With the completion of the Inmagic project, finding information in our Centre will be considerably enhanced.

The Board wishes to express particular thanks to Erica Suderman and her group of volunteers for undertaking the massive Inmagic implementation project.