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Agassiz-Harrison Museum

$5500

The Early Tourism in the Eastern Fraser Valley project will digitize documents related to historic tourism initiatives and accommodations within the vicinity of Harrison Lake; that is, what is today the Village of Harrison Hot Springs and the District of Kent. These documents are from four archival collections: the Probert, Kennedy, and Altendorf Collections. Included are letters, photographs, booklets, posters, brochures, event programs, maps, a ledger, and an account book. The total number of items selected for digitization span from 1891 to 1971.

Canadian Motorsport Historical Society

$1998

The BC Motorsport History Digitization project (part 1) has digitized approximately 2500 photos from negative film and slides, plus about 100 race programs, covering auto racing in B.C., spanning the years 1953 to 2022.

The BC Motorsport History Digitization project (part 2) will digitize approximately 3500 more photos from negative film covering auto racing in B.C., spanning the years 1960 to 1963,  and  1993 to 2004.

Chinese Nationalist League of Canada Archives

$1742.66

This project aims to preserve, digitize, and provide long-term access to the archival holdings of the Chinese Nationalist League of Canada (CNLOC), beginning with records from the Victoria Branch and Western Division. The 2026–2027 phase serves as a pilot implementation stage focused on establishing digitization capacity, procedures, and infrastructure. Key tasks include acquiring essential equipment, developing standardized workflows, and conducting volunteer training to ensure long-term sustainability. A small, curated set of items selected from a larger 600-item Mandarin inventory will be used to test the full workflow, including experimental tasks such as transcription and interpretation. If timeline and capacity allow, additional items will be incorporated.

Creston & District Historical & Museum Society

$6134.56

This project will digitize approximately 2,160 issues of the Creston Review, a weekly newspaper published at Creston BC, from 1 January 1936 through 31 December 1980. The digitized newspapers will be made available publicly online through UBC Library’s Open Collections.

Cumberland Map Digitization Project

$7,650

Cumberland Museum will complete a significant map digitization project to preserve and increase public access to 16 extra-large historic maps documenting the Dunsmuir and Canadian Collieries coal mines of the Comox Valley between 1910 and 1955, and the E&N Land Grant. These fragile maps document Cumberland’s social, economic, and labour history, and provide rare insight into the underground workings and industrial landscape that shaped the community. Once digitized, the maps will be added to the Cumberland Digital Museum (cumberlandhistory.ca).

The Friends of the Vancouver City Archives Society

$15,000

In collaboration with the City of Vancouver Archives (CVA), this project will digitize and make available 188 videos created by longtime Vancouver community activist, documentarian and television producer Sid Chow Tan (1949-2022) between 1987 and 2012 (1990s predominant).

This is the second phase of a multi-year project that will see the entirety of Tan’s video archives (approximately 1300 individual video recordings) digitized and made available according to the wishes of his family and community.

The second phase focuses on Tan’s documentation of life and activism in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, and environmental and anti-globalisation activism in the 1990s. Recordings on the analogue Umatic video format were prioritized due to their inherent vulnerability. Much of the material included in Phase Two is unedited footage, some of which was subsequently used in Tan’s local-access television programs. Many complete episodes of Tan’s programs were digitized as part of Phase One.

grunt gallery

$9,132

This one-year project will digitize and share select images and documents associated with three women who made substantial contributions to the visual art sector in British Columbia via their work at grunt gallery: curator/photographer Donna Hagerman, artist/curator Haruko Okano, and artist/curator Daina Warren. These women, though they are not often recognized in the macro narrative of BC contemporary art, shared community-rooted critical perspectives with BC audiences through accessible and inclusive creative, curatorial, and documentary practices. Over three decades they helped to build an ambitious but humble, artist-first ethos that made grunt a welcoming home for outsider, performance, BIPOC, Queer, and socially engaged art and in doing so, made a lasting impact on the BC art historical record.

Kaatza Station Museum & Archives

$5,034

This is the final phase of a 4 year project, intended to tie up and complete our International Woodworkers of America (IWA) newspaper project. Phase 1 and 2 saw the digitization of most of the IWA’s newspapers, the BC/Western Canadian Lumber Worker, and Phase 3 saw the digitization of newspapers produced by individual local union offices—Locals 1-80, 1-217, 1-71, 1-357, 1-367, 1-424, and 1-425. This final phase of the project will include the digitization of oversized issues of the BC Lumber Worker, early issues of the BC Lumber Worker, and the digitization of the Job Steward, a newspaper produced by Port Alberni’s Local 1-85.

Kwakiutl Band Council (Lands & Resources Department)

$15,000

The Kwakiutl Ethnohistory Digitization Initiative – Phase 1 will digitize priority cultural heritage materials documenting Kwakiutl history, governance, and land relations. Phase 1 focuses on archival materials connected to 20–30 priority village sites selected from the 143 known ancestral Kwakiutl village sites, along with Sacred Geography maps, Kwak’wala place-names, oral histories, and early Treaty- and Title-related records. Materials include hand-drawn maps, photographs, field notes, transcripts, and audio recordings.

This is the first phase of a planned multi-year effort to preserve the full Kwakiutl ethnohistory archive. Phase 1 establishes digitization standards, metadata frameworks, and cultural protocol pathways, creating a foundation for future phases that will digitize remaining village-site records, additional oral histories, governance archives, and Traditional Use documentation. All digitized materials will be stored securely in Trailmark Cloud under Kwakiutl cultural access protocols.

Liǧʷiɫdax̌ʷ Research Centre

$7,606

The Liǧʷiɫdax̌ʷ Research Centre seeks funding to digitize, preserve, and organize approximately 80 boxes of We Wai Kai Nation historical court case records. These records, spanning the 1900s to 2000s, will be scanned to archival standards, described with detailed metadata, and uploaded into Past Perfect software for secure long-term storage and searchable access. This project will improve governance, legal research, and historical reference capabilities for Nation members, while respecting privacy and Indigenous cultural protocols. This phase builds on prior digitization work and represents a continuation of the Centre’s commitment to safeguarding the Nation’s legal heritage.

Museum of the Cariboo Chilcotin

$7,500

Following the success of our previous digitization initiative, the Museum of the Cariboo-Chilcotin is launching the next phase of its multi-year effort to preserve and share local journalism. This project focuses on digitizing a 20-year span of the Williams Lake Tribune (1960-1980). Currently stored in multiple bankers boxes, these broadsheet editions are at increasing risk of deterioration. Building on the methods and momentum established in the earlier phase, this project will create high-quality digital surrogates to these valuable regional records on our website. This phase fits into the broader vision of safeguarding the community’s documentary heritage through systemic digitization.

Musqueam Indian Band

$2,624.14

Musqueam Archives and Research Department stewards a map collection depicting Musqueam territory and reserves, land use and occupancy, settlement patterns, traditional place names, and ethnobotanical knowledge. Gathered since the 1950s the collection has grown to 250 maps from archaeologists, Musqueam Elders, and Musqueam fishers. It also includes copies of annotated early colonial maps. These maps are currently only in analogue form. 43 maps have been selected as high priority from this collection with the remaining portion to be digitized as time permits. The proposed maps will be digitized through high-resolution photography to support access and knowledge transfer to Musqueam members and administration staff.

Nelson Museum, Archives and Gallery

$4,427

The project is to digitize the pages of the final seven years of the Nelson Daily News newspaper from July 1, 2003 to July 16, 2010. All 44 copy microfilm reels will be provided from Nelson Museum’s own microfilm collection. The information on these reels will be digitally scanned by the UBC Library Digitization Centre. The digital collection will be hosted on the UBC Historical Newspapers Open Collections website.

This phase of the project is the last part of an overall project to digitise the whole of the Nelson Daily News from 1902 to 2010.

Prince Rupert Public Library

$15,000

Turning the Pages is an ongoing digital repository project. The goal of the project is the digitization of the entirety of Prince Rupert’s newspaper The Daily News, which was in circulation from 1911 to 2010. Prince Rupert Library holds microfilm copies of the newspaper on 35mm reels. Digitizing the reels and hosting them on the website will aid their preservation and make them far more accessible.

Since the genesis of the Turning the Pages project in 2010, Prince Rupert Library has successfully digitized the first sixty years of The Daily News; fifty-two of those years have been uploaded to our public website. Funds will be dedicated to digitizing and ingest further issues of The Daily News, including sixteen years of The Daily News, or 48,000 newspaper pages.

Stó:lō Library and Archives

$15,000

The Si:yémiya Collection Digitization Project – Phase 2 seeks to digitize approximately 2m of textual records and 150 photographs compiled during Si:yémiya’s research into traditional Stó:lō place-names. Beginning in 1985, Si:yémiya (Naxaxalhts’i / Albert ‘Sonny’ McHalsie) worked with community members and elders to compile place-name resources. The content of the records contains invaluable cultural information dating to pre-contact. Si:yémiya will be retained to provide insight into the work captured in the records to provide further context.

This project is part of a previous BCHDP grant project (2023-24) which digitized Stó:lō placenames maps (project titled ‘The Naxaxalhts’I Collection Digitization Project’). This project phase will digitize associated textual records and photographs of identified placenames and is expected to be the final phase.

S.U.C.C.E.S.S. (also known as UNITED CHINESE COMMUNITY ENRICHMENT SERVICES SOCIETY)

$2,745

The Digitization of S.U.C.C.E.S.S. Evergreen News is a project to digitize Evergreen News – a monthly newspaper written in Traditional Chinese and published in print spanning 1995 – 2004.

This is phase 2 of the project which was funded last year where issues from 1985-1994 were digitized. Phase 2 of the project includes the digitization of 120 issues of Evergreen News. The digitized collection serves many families, researchers, scholars, social scientists, and students who are passionate about learning, knowing, and preserving the rich history of Chinese Canadians in British Columbia. The digitized collection also celebrates the adventures and challenges of Chinese Canadian seniors as well as records of Canada’s policies and laws on migration and inclusion through the eyes of Chinese Canadian writers, scholars, and ordinary residents.

Surrey Art Gallery

$9,172.14

The Saga Community Arts Show Digitization project aims to preserve and spread cultural awareness of the rich contemporary arts history that emerged in Surrey and neighboring communities in the 1980s.

Colloquially referred to as The Saga Show, this community television production provided a pivotal space to amplify the voices of local artists, students, and arts professionals who exhibited art in local galleries and public spaces of Surrey, White Rock, and New Westminster, promoting a collective interest in arts, community, and connection.

This project will digitize 2 U-Matic tapes, 4 VHS tapes, and 18 DVDs which altogether contain approximately 23 hours of recorded interviews at events, exhibitions, and other arts related community programming spanning three years, 1984 to 1987. Originally filmed as 49 episodes, 46 episodes remain and to prevent further loss, they will be digitized, stored archivally, and shared publicly to celebrate and preserve this historic period.

Swedish Heritage in British Columbia

$3,112.50

Swedish Heritage in British Columbia (SHBC) works to preserve, document, and record the history of Swedes, and people of Swedish heritage, who settled in BC and helped shape the province. SHBC proposes to complete the digitization of its Svenska Pressen (Swedish Press) collection, a Vancouver-based Swedish-language periodical published continuously since 1928.

The broadsheet editions of the paper (1932-1985) have been digitized through previous BCHDP grants awarded in 2024 and 2025. This would allow us to complete the project by digitizing the 324 editions (1986-2012) published in a magazine format, to which we hold copyright (approx. 9,720 pages).

Overall, the vision is to make this substantial resource, spanning eight decades, easily accessible to local and international researchers, genealogists, and others interested in the experience and contributions of the province’s Swedish community. We hope to preserve these papers now while they are still in good condition.

Treaty 8 Tribal Association (T8TA)

$15,000

This proposed phase of the larger Digital Repatriation of the Ridington Dane-zaa Archive project will digitize 118 oral history recordings and one video spanning 1964 to 2009.

The Digital Repatriation of the Ridington Dane-zaa Archive (RDA) project is funded by a 2024 Digitizing Hidden Collections grant awarded by the Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR) to the Treaty 8 Tribal Association. The 3-year project (2025-2027) focuses on completing the digitization of original materials within the RDA, transferring the digital archive to a customized community portal on the T8TA Archival Database for stable and secure community access, community engagement sessions for source individuals, families, and First Nations to articulate protocols for the ethical use and dissemination of their heritage materials, and formal repatriation for Indigenous governance. The project will demonstrate a new model for Indigenous heritage reclamation and control.

Union of British Columbia Indian Chiefs

$13,300

This project aims to uncover and share the early strategies, stories, and leadership visions of the UBCIC during a formative period from the early-1970s to early-1980s. While landmark actions like the Constitution Express and Indian Child Caravan are well known, this project focuses on the lesser-documented initiatives, such as the Our Native Land Chiefs Conference, the fieldworker program, and UBCIC’s global advocacy through the World Council of Indigenous Peoples (WCIP). Drawing from a substantial collection of undigitized archival materials, this work will bring to light voices and moments that shaped Indigenous political strategy and global solidarity.

While items in other formats for digitization as part of this larger project (e.g., slides, publications, negatives, audio) have been identified, priority will be on the digitization of video reels due to deterioration risk, content, and popularity of UBCIC’s previously digitized recordings of our 1975 Annual General Assembly.

Western Front

$4,928

Western Front proposes to photograph and make accessible 458 posters, ephemera, and textual records that span the history of the organization and its importance in the wider development of the Vancouver arts and cultural landscape of the 1970s onwards. The posters document, promote, and summarize over 2,000 events and presentations that showcase the work of nearly 6,000 artists at a local and international scale.

The posters themselves also represent a history of Vancouver public events, progression of graphic design through the decades, DIY aesthetics, and small press production, in addition to the promotion of multiple forms of artistic practice including new music, literary, choreography, performance, and media arts.