Search the Municipal Archives Database

The Municipal Archives' online database contains searchable descriptions of archival records, publications, and artifacts held at Halifax Municipal Archives.

Some notes to help your search:

  • Archival records are first described as high-level series (e.g., Mayor's Office subject files), not item-by-item, although some photographs, maps, and plans do have item-level representation in the database, and many series have file-level descriptions.
  • Digital versions of records are made available in the database for many, but not all items – you can filter your search results for material with digitized photos and text. Remember that the database is foremost a catalogue of the Municipal Archives’ holdings, not a database of the actual content of the records.
  • Explore the Advanced Search options to narrow your search by date, type of format (e.g., only photographs), or to only those with digital copies available, etc.
  • Published reports and books from the Reference Collection and artifacts are catalogued as items.

More detailed search tips are available through the HELP tab in the database. Contact the Municipal Archives if you do not find what you were looking for, or to enquire if there are recently acquired and unprocessed records relevant to your research.

Provincial Database: MemoryNS

To search for archival holdings from other archival institutions across Nova Scotia (including us!), use MemoryNS from the Council of Nova Scotia Archives.