Staff at the Innisfail Historical Village will now be able to better preserve history with the installation of a new security system at the museum.
The museum received a grant from the Alberta Museums Association for $8,900 to put towards installing a number of new security features at the village.
Fire alarms, smoke detectors and motion lights have been installed in each of the buildings on the site. All of the buildings with furnaces will now have heat detectors and the security system will soon be hooked up to an outside monitoring system so it can be monitored from off site.
“We took an overall view at the security requirements of the village and this is just phase one,” said Dean Jorden, curator at the village.
Some of the new security features are part of the regular upgrades to the system but some of them, such as the motion lights, are addressing specific problems.
Last summer several youth breached the fence at the Village and broke into a number of buildings and vandalized the teahouse.
Jordan said that while they normally have very little vandalism at the Village, they hope the new security measures will prevent incidences such as this from happening in the future.
Jordan said that museum officials would be looking into the need for some sort of video surveillance system as well.
“Museums do generally lose things just from the day to day visitors, so it is something to consider.”
The village will be opening in the third week of March and some of the new additions will include a new storage building, and artifacts from the Dr. George/Kemp house once it is sold.
Jordan said that this year they would also be starting some new school group tours of the village.
