Virtually none of the people who go into the Yukon Archives (or any archives, for that matter), ever get to see where the documents that record our collective history are stored. This week, I'm going to take you on a cyber-tour of the fireproof, climate-controlled vault in Whitehorse that is a true "gold mine" to historians and genealogists.

    All the photos were taken by me in April 1999 just before I resigned after 4½ years working in the vault. (It was a fascinating place to work but, unfortunately, a "government job").

The photo below shows the main work area where the Page, who is in charge of retrieving and putting away the documents that researchers request, does the record-keeping for those documents.

The shelves below hold more than 21,000 books on any imaginable subject related to the Yukon, and to a lesser degree Alaska, the Northwest Territories and northern British Columbia.

The next three photos show my favourite area, where the 11,500 maps, plans and atlases are stored. Because of the wide variety of sizes, this area has several types of storage, including various styles of racks and steel drawer units.

The last two photos show the moveable shelving which saves a great deal of space. Electric motors move these shelving units so that only one aisle at a time is open. Since normally only the Page is working in the vault, it works out very well. Stored on these shelves are 118,000 photographs, as well as the corporate records, private manuscripts, sound recordings, film, and some of the government documents, magazines and newspapers.

Below are the shelves where "in-process" material awaits description by the archivists, and input into the regular system where it is fully accessible to researchers.

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