BC History Digitization Program – 2011 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 2011.

 

Project Title: Opening the Vault: Providing Digital Access to New Resources for BC History Study – Port Alberni community development
Organization: Alberni Valley Museum
Amount: $10,000
Description: This project will provide opportunities for understanding community growth of Port Alberni by digitizing and providing online access to 2,900 images from the time period 1910-1960.

 

Project Title: Historic Photographs of Campbell River Digitization Project
Organization: Campbell River & District Museum & Archives Society
Amount: $6,000
Description: This project will promote and enhance access to the history of Campbell River, a unique BC coastal community, by digitizing a selection of images of defining events and settlers and their regional influence. Museum at Campbell River

 

Project Title: Cheslatta Carrier Nation Archives: “Our Gift to the World”
Organization: Cheslatta Carrier Nation
Amount: $7,500
Description: For nearly 30 years, the Cheslatta Carrier Nation have meticulously gathered, documented, preserved, and displayed the unique history of their people, land, and culture. Along with construction of Cheslatta.com, they are now ready to digitize these materials and make them available via the web.

 

Project Title: Burnaby Oral History Digitization Project
Organization: City of Burnaby Archives
Amount: $10,000
Description: The Archives holds approximately 100 hrs of oral history recordings of interviews with Burnaby pioneers. This project proposes the digitization of these analog records and the creation of a website that will allow the public the opportunity to search, browse, and listen to the interviews online. Heritage Burnaby Oral History Interviews

 

Project Title: City of Vancouver Map and Plan Digitization
Organization: City of Vancouver Archives
Amount: $11,800
Description: A selection of maps and plans from the Archives’ holding will be digitized and linked to existing descriptions in the Archives’ database. These images will be searchable and viewable on the Archives’ website as both large and thumbnail jpeg files.

 

Project Title: Emily Carr University Historical Calendar Digitization Project
Organization: Emily Carr University of Art + Design Library
Amount: $3,488
Description: Many instructors and administrators throughout Emily Carr University’s history have made major contributions to art and design, both nationally and internationally. Digitizing 83 years of school calendars will improve access for a broad range of researchers while preserving the original materials.

 

Project Title: Powell Street Digitization Project
Organization: Japanese Canadian National Museum
Amount: $8,612
Description: This project proposes the digitization and web access of 2,000 photographs, artifacts, and archival records related to the history of Vancouver’s historic Powell Street neighbourhood (sometimes called Japantown), the major commercial centre for Japanese Canadians before 1942. NNM Collection Database

 

Project Title: Oral History Collection Digitization and Access Project
Organization: Jewish Museum and Archives of British Columbia
Amount: $6,900
Description: This project is an initiative to make the Museum’s archival collections available on the Internet. The JMABC plans to digitize a portion of its Oral History Collection. Digitized interviews will be uploaded on the website. This will greatly enhance access and research, as well as promote and create awareness of the Museum’s collections. Oral Histories

 

Project Title: Kaslo Voices Video Project
Organization: Kootenay Lake Archives
Amount: $800
Description: This project will digitize, edit and produce an historical video documentary from analog audio and video material from 1985. Elders depicted in this material provide a unique record of early settlement of Kaslo and the surrounding area.

 

Project Title: Life Histories: Historical Manuscripts of the District of Lake Country
Organization: Lake Country Museum and Archives
Amount: $3,815
Description: The LCMA will digitize 47 original manuscripts which describe various aspects of Lake Country’s history from the late 1800s to the 1950s. The manuscripts will be accompanied by digitized archival photographs and will be available to the public through the Museum’s website. LCMA Manuscripts

 

Project Title: Year Two BC First Nations Collections Digitization
Organization: Museum of Vancouver
Amount: $13,444
Description: This is the second phase of a two year project that focuses on digital photography of BC First Nations collections at MOV. The Museum will finish the remaining Northwest Coast collections, the Interior BC collections as well as digitize a small collection of archaeology material related to the Musqueam First Nation. openMOV

 

Project Title: Prince George Newspaper Digitization Project
Organization: Prince George Public Library
Amount: $15,000
Description: The Prince George Newspaper Digitization Project began in 2007 with the aim to provide digital access to all locally published newspapers from before the incorporation of the city to present day. The goal for this coming year is to add another three to four years of newspapers to the Prince George Citizen by bringing the database up to 1980 to 1981. Prince George Newspapers

Project Title: Salt Spring Island News: The Driftwood, the second decade, 1970-1980
Organization: Salt Spring Island Archives
Amount: $5,000
Description: This project will digitize the second ten years (1970-1980) of the local newspaper, The Driftwood. Digitizing these frequently used materials will preserve the originals and facilitate access. The Driftwood

 

Project Title: Vancouver Punk
Organization: Simon Fraser University Library
Amount: $3,833
Description: Vancouver Punk was not only an important music genre, but also very significant in its role in many social, political, and economic causes. The centrepiece of this project will be the John Armstrong collection containing photographs, handbills and promotional materials, handwritten song lyrics, correspondence and other significant ephemera. Vancouver Punk

 

Project Title: Digital Imaging of the Spencer Entomological Collection’s Species at Risk
Organization: Spencer Entomological Collection, Beaty Biodiversity Museum
Amount: $15,000
Description: This project will digitize two important sections of the collection, provincially endangered (Red) and threatened (Blue) listed species and pollinators, especially bees. Three views will be taken of each specimen of species with a Leica LAS montage system and the resulting images will be linked to a collection database. Spencer Entomological Collection database

 

Project Title: Digitization of Sunshine Coast Newspaper Archives, Phase I
Organization: Sunshine Coast Museum and Archives
Amount: $10,000
Description: This project will create a comprehensive, publicly-accessible digital database of newspapers from the Sunshine Coast region. During Phase I, the issues of the Coast News in most urgent need of preservation (1945-76, 1983-87, and 1989) will be digitized and made available in an easily accessible web-searchable format.

 

Project Title: Abbotsford Living History Project
Organization: The Reach Gallery Museum Abbotsford
Amount: $6,000
Description: The Reach’s Abbotsford Living History Project will digitize 8,000 images from their collection, provide online access, solicit feedback from the community and facilitate sharing through social networking sites. The Reach Archives

 

Project Title: A Legacy of the Flora of British Columbia: Digital Archiving and Presentation of the Preserved Plant Collections of John Davidson (1878-1970)
Organization: UBC Herbarium, Beaty Biodiversity Museum
Amount: $15,000
Description: This project aims to produce a digital image archive of 3,000 pressed plant specimens of John Davidson. John Davidson was a botanist for the BC Provincial Botanical Office, he created the Vancouver Natural History Society and was the first ‘demonstrator’ of the UBC Herbarium and Botanical Garden. His collections represent some of the earliest plant collections documenting the flora of BC (1912-1957).

 

Project Title: The Colonial Despatches 1860 and 500 early BC maps
Organization: University of Victoria Libraries
Amount: $11,000
Description: To date, the project has digitized Vancouver Island (VI) and British Columbia (BC) despatches, 1846-59, and over 250 early BC maps have been put online. This year the project will continue by digitizing the VI and BC despatches for 1860, making them available in the searchable eXist database, and licence maps from Hudson’s Bay Archives, BC Lands Title & Surveys Office for inclusion on UVic Library’s Early BC Maps portal. Colonial Despatches

 

Project Title: West Kootenay Women’s Digital History Project, Phase II
Organization: West Kootenay Women’s Association
Amount: $10,000
Description: WKWA proposes to digitize a unique part of BC’s culture and history. The second phase of this project will concentrate on the audio/visual portion of the digital archives, including interviews with significant figures in the feminist movement in the West Kootenays, as well as posters, photos, slides of various historical events. Kootenay Feminism

 

Project Title: Historical Photograph Digitization Project
Organization: West Vancouver Memorial Library
Amount: $6,300
Description: The project will digitize the historical photographs collection consisting of 3,800 images as well as 300 pages of local/personal histories. Digitization and online access to these materials will improve access and preserve the collection by minimizing the need to use the original photographs and documents. West Vancouver Historical Photograph Collection

 

 

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