BC History Digitization Program – 2012 Projects

In September 2006, the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre at the University of British Columbia Library announced the BC History Digitization Program. The focus of the program is to promote increased access to British Columbia’s historical resources, including providing matching funds to undertake digitization projects that will result in free online access to our unique provincial historical material. Below is a list of successful applicants for 2012.

Project Title: Historic Photographs of the Discovery Islands
Organization: Campbell River and District Museum and Archives Society
Amount: $6,600
Description: The project will digitize and make publicly available 2000 original photographs, negatives and transparencies depicting life on the islands in the early 20th Century.

Project Title: Year One Vancouver History Collection Digitization
Organization: Museum of Vancouver
Amount: $12,487
Description: MOV will photograph 2593 objects from its important Vancouver History Collection making them accessible through their online database, openMOV.

Project Title: Japanese Canadian Internment Digitization Project
Organization: Nikkei National Museum
Amount: $7,732
Description: This project will digitize and provide web access to 1500 photographs and artifacts related to the forced removal of 22,000 people of Japanese ancestry from the coast between 1941 and 1947.

Project Title: ARCH [BC] – Archival Records of Ceramic History in BC
Organization: Potters Guild of BC
Amount: $4500
Description: This project will digitize and make available the Potters Guild Newsletters spanning 1965 – 2010.

Project Title: Prince George Newspaper Digitization Project
Organization: Prince George Public Library
Amount: $15,000
Description: The project will continue to build on the Library’s efforts to digitize and provide access to all locally published papers from before the incorporation of the city to the present. For the 2012 year, the project will digitize papers from 1977 to 1984 – 85.

Project Title: Turning the Pages (phase 2)
Organization: Prince Rupert Library
Amount: $14,000
Description: The project will continue the work of digitizing the Prince Rupert Daily News. For the 2012, the years 1935 to 1949 will be digitized and made available online.

Project Title: Abbotsford Living History Project
Organization: The Reach Gallery and Museum Abbotsford
Amount: $10,000
Description: The project will enable the Reach to complete the digitization of their catalogued photograph collection, including their recently acquired collection of Abbotsford News photographs from 1960 to 1990.

Project Title: Cadet Life at Royal Roads Military College: The Log Yearbooks from 1943 – 1995
Organization: Royal Roads University
Amount: $3,082
Description: This project will digitize and make available online 55 Royal Roads Military College yearbooks that depict training and education Canadian military officers received in BC between 1943 and 1955.

Project Title: Spring Island News: The Driftwood, the 1980s
Organization: Salt Spring Island Historical Society
Amount: $7000
Description: Part of a multi-year project to digitize the The Driftwood, issues will be made publicly available for the years 1980 to 1989.

Project Title: B.C. Postcards
Organization: Simon Fraser University Library
Amount: $13,191.25
Description: This project will provide digital access to 4000 British Columbia Postcards including early 20th century black and white postcards to 1950’s Technicolor cards. The postcards depict towns and places from every corner of the province including rare postcards from now vanished communities.

Project Title: Digital Gateway of the South Peace Historical Society Archives to Promote Access and Preservation
Organization: South Peace Historical Society
Amount: $8,200
Description: The project will digitize and provide remote access to a variety of holdings including photographs, maps, plans and city directories.

Project Title: Imaging the Spencer Entomological Collection
Organization: Spencer Entomological Collection
Amount: $14,600
Description: The Spencer Entomological Collection will image 1000 B.C. insect specimens from three views using their Leica LAS montage system.

Project Title: Squamish Digital History Archive Project, Part III: Photographs up to 1960
Organization: Squamish Public Library
Amount: $ 5148.71
Description: This phase of the project will digitize and make available over 20 years of photographs form the Squamish Times Photograph Collection.

Project Title: Landscape Lost: Forestry and Life in the Duncan River Valley
Organization: Touchstones Nelson Museum of Art and History
Amount: $2500
Description: This project will provide online access to photographs documenting the Duncan River Valley and forest industry between 1947 and 1952, before the construction of the Duncan Dam which flooded the valley and altered the landscape and industry forever.

Project Title: The Industrial and Commercial Development of Trail, BC
Organization: Trail Historical Society
Amount: $1560
Description: The project will provide access to a large collection of negatives and original prints for W.J. Carpenter and the Hughes Brothers taken during the city’s industrial boom. Images range from panoramic industrial scenes to the steady development of Trail’s commercial core.

Project Title: Digitization of court files from the John Keenlyside Legal Research Collection.
Organization: UBC Library Rare Books and Special Collections, Digital Initiatives
Amount: $1000
Description: The project will digitize and make available 323 case files from early B.C. courts created from 1858 to 1891. The case files document people’s interaction with the court system of early British Columbia with particular focus on Chinese and Aboriginal people.

Project Title: A Legacy of Flora of British Columbia: Digital Archiving and Presentation of the Preserved Plant Collections of John Davidson Correspondence Volunteers (1912-1930)
Organization: The University of British Columbia Herbarium
Amount: $12,000
Description: The project will cover the creation of a digital archive of 2500 pressed plant specimens documenting BC’s natural history.

Project Title: Karl Spreitz Film Archive Digitization Project
Organization: University of Victoria Art Collections
Amount: $8,555
Description: The project will digitize a portion of Karl Spreitz’s extensive film archive focusing on BC artists, First Nations cultural heritage, experimental art films and BC historical films.

Project Title: bcgenesis: The Colonial Despatches 1861
Organization: University of Victoria Libraries
Amount: $10,000
Description: Having previously digitized the Colonial Despatches from 1846, to 1860, the project will continue by digitizing Vancouver Island and BC despatches for 1861, linking them page for page to transcriptions of each despatch.

Project Title: Glass Plates of British Columbia: photos by Trueman, Thomson, Bailey Brothers and the Dominion Photograph Company
Organization: Vancouver Public Library
Amount: $15,000
Description: The project will digitize and make available online the library’s unique collection of glass plate negatives depicting the early history of British Columbia from the 1890s to the 1920s.

Project Title: District of West Vancouver Reports, Publications, and Ephemera Digitization Project
Organization: West Vancouver Archives
Amount: $5,500
Description: The project will digitize and make available a selection of reports, studies, ephemera and publications created by the District of West Vancouver since its founding in 1912.

Project Title: Historical Photograph Digitization Project – Year 2
Organization: West Vancouver Memorial Library
Amount: $4,550
Description: This phase of the project will make 1500 historical images depicting the life and development of West Vancouver available online collated with 300 pages of family and local histories.

Project Title: For Those Tired of Questions: Digitizing the Whistler Answer
Organization: Whistler Museum and Archives Society
Amount: $5720
Description: This project will digitize the complete run of the Whistler Answer, Whistler’s alternative culture newspaper from the 1970s.

For more information please contact: