Rooted in history, the Thunder Bay Museum in Canada offers visitors several galleries of local, regional, and national heritage dating back to the 1800s. The Museum’s exhibits depict the early years of Thunder Bay and Northwestern Ontario, as well as works by local artists and craftspeople. Preserving the museum’s history is paramount, and its newspaper archive was a priority.
For over two decades, the Thunder Bay Museum preserved its newspaper archive using a common office tool: a photocopier. It functioned to a degree, but the staffers knew it wasn’t an ideal solution. The quality was low, and the speed slowed down the archiving process for its team of volunteers.
A Contex flatbed scanner is the professional’s tool to capture delicate, oversized materials such as a museum newspaper archive. The Thunder Bay Museum installed a Contex IQ FLEX, a flatbed scanner for transforming documents, books, textiles, artwork, and more into digital content.
Thunder Bay Museum is able to build its digital archive faster, and with better quality, than ever before. By reducing the scanning time, its team of volunteers can process more newspapers for museum visitors and researchers to easily access.
“The Contex scanner is user-friendly. I’m surprised that the learning curve is not steep. The scanner does what it needs to do. The presets make it easy.”
— Michael deJong, Curator/Archivist
Thunder Bay Museum
