The Mennonite Heritage Village (MHV) in Steinbach, Manitoba, is recruiting volunteers to help bring local history into the digital age. The new call for help follows national sessions of the Mennonite Historical Society of Canada (MHSC) and aims to make thousands of regional records available online.
The museum needs people to scan family photographs and transcribe handwritten records, including material written in older German scripts such as Sütterlin. These local files will be added to the Mennonite Archival Information Database (MAID), a national, online discovery database that makes archival descriptions and images searchable and is accessible to researchers and genealogists worldwide. MHV says the project responds to a large number of photos and journals donated by families during recent anniversary commemorations; Senior Curator Andrea Dyck is leading the local effort.
By moving these records from attics to a searchable database, the museum hopes to preserve fragile documents and make it easier for researchers to find information about early settlers. Training sessions for the new volunteer roles are scheduled to begin in February 2026 at the museum’s research centre. While some tasks will require using high-speed archival scanners on-site, there are also opportunities for volunteers to transcribe records remotely from home.
