Helen Creighton Fonds Multi-Media Web Page (review)

This Web page highlights the Nova Scotia Archives and Records Management's impressive folklore collection amassed by one of Canada's best-known folklore collectors, Helen Creighton (1899-1989). The collection, known as the Helen Creighton Fonds (and previously called the Helen Creighton Collection), consists of three series: photographs depicting Creighton's life and career; sound recordings and moving images made and accumulated by Creighton; and correspondence and other material. In total it includes a staggering 2788 black and white and colour prints, 1045 negatives, 20 glass slides, 7 drawings, 1 print, 552 audio tape reels, 307 audio discs, 15 audio cassettes, 4 audio cartridges, 4 cylinder recordings, 4 video cassettes, and 3 film reels.

The primary goal of the Web page is to introduce Creighton to a wider popular audience. The introduction reads: 'NSARM is pleased to offer here a multi-media web page leading to archival descriptions and content listings for the Helen Creighton fonds, making the results of her life's work accessible to new audiences near and far. For visitors interested in the highlights of Creighton's long life and career, we've also provided a special Virtual Exhibit with over 50 photographs, several sound clips and a selection of online documents, including first-hand accounts of the supernatural.' The supernatural is again emphasized when describing the content of Creighton's life work: 'The archival record accumulated from these investigations is rich in information and material about folk songs and ancient ballads, folk tales, dances, games, cures, proverbs, children's folklore - and, of course, the subject area for which Dr. Creighton is perhaps best known, namely the world of the supernatural - ghosts, superstitions, witchcraft and buried treasure.' Supernatural belief and legend actually were not Creighton's own collecting priorities; she was chiefly interested in folksong. And it is her collection of folksongs that academics now consider her greatest contribution. However, this categorization reflects that, in the public mind, at least within Nova Scotia, Creighton is heavily associated with the supernatural, due in large part to the popularity of her book Bluenose Ghosts. Thus, the introduction to this Web page does not challenge popular view, but builds on it.

The Helen Creighton Fonds Multi-Media Web Page consists of three elements: biographical background about Creighton that outlines her career as a folklore collector; the Virtual Exhibit that highlights aspects of her life and work; and a Virtual Archives where one can begin to explore the fonds. The Virtual Exhibit offers the possibility of clicking through the selected images and listening to brief sound clips from the holdings of Helen Creighton. Wonderful photographs are interspersed with rich sound clips, but the exhibit provides just an introduction. For those already familiar with Helen Creighton and her work, there will not be much new here. For example, a couple of pages taken from her field journals are included, but the excerpts are short. To learn much about Creighton requires a trip to the physical, rather than the virtual, nsarm.

It is the Virtual Archive that is the strength of the Web page. Here one can begin to search the fonds and to access Creighton's work in new ways. For example, one can see in a flash all the material she collected from a particular place or all the collected versions of a particular song. That said, I found the search possibilities limiting in that it was not possible to search by concept - for example, women singers - or even by folklore genre, such as broadside ballad.

A recent survey indicated that most teenagers would rather be without a tv than a computer, and it is possible that this Web page will provide some of these young surfers an introduction to a folklore collector's work and to types of cultural expression they might not otherwise encounter. Certainly the Helen Creighton Fonds Multi-Media...