Western NSW parliamentary secretary Rick Colless presented $71,000 to Orange Regional Museum on Friday, which will pay for a consulting collections officer to work with all museums across the Orange, Cabonne and Blayney LGAs, including Molong, Carcoar, Canowindra, Eugowra and Yeoval. 

The consultant will work with volunteers to digitise their collections of art, artefacts, historical family records and photographs and make more information available online.

Heritage co-ordinator Alison Russell said it would build on work the museum had already been doing with its regional partners.

“A lot of smaller museums have limited resources, their collections are ageing, they’ve been collecting for at at least 50 years, they’re volunteers and the majority of their volunteers are over 70 and don’t have the skill and the knowledge to be able to do this so this project will assist,” she said. 

Mr Colless said it would enable researchers outside the region to access information online.

“Then they can say Orange has all these artefacts so we’ll go there and do what they need to do,” he said. 

The pilot will build a business case to roll the program out across the state.