Services

Visiting and Appointments

The Archives is open 9:00am to 12:00pm and 1:00pm to 4:30pm, Mon through Thu. Appointments are recommended for research.

Reference service is the assistance provided to staff and public researchers by Archives' staff in finding material relevant to a research topic or question. This help includes how to use finding aids (online and in-house), narrowing or widening a search and how to handle archival documents.
Limited reference service is available for those making inquiries from a distance. This usually takes the form of informing the researcher of resources available and, if appropriate, mailing photocopied materials or emailing PDFs of scanned documents.

The City of Richmond Archives online database contains more than 10,000 photographs that document the people, events and places of the community of Richmond from the late 1800s to modern times. This database, however, contains only a small portion of the Archives holdings. Contact staff if search results do not include what is being searched for.
Images are subject to the Copyright Act of Canada and are provided on this website for research purposes only. Re-use requires written permission.
In purchasing a photograph reproduction, the researcher obtains permission for personal use only. Permission is not granted for further reproduction or for use other than that specified in the original photograph order.
All City of Richmond Archives photographs that are published are required to include a credit as to the source of the photograph. For example: "City of Richmond Archives, Photograph #1234 56 78."
Reproductions of photographs are available for purchase and use according to specific terms and conditions. A copy of the fee schedule can be downloaded in PDF format:
Reproduction Fees and Services
Photograph reproduction orders cannot be processed until a Conditions of Use Agreement has been received by the City of Richmond Archives. A copy of the conditions of use agreement can be downloaded to print out, or as a fillable form:
Conditions of Use Agreement
Conditions of Use Agreement - Fillable

Photocopies (black and white) cost $0.35 per page.
Photocopies (colour) cost $0.50 per page.
Archival materials will be copied by staff. The photocopier is not publicly available. If the photocopy request is large, pick up of copies might on a following day.
For conservation reasons some fragile paper documents are not available for copying.