In September 2006, the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre at the University of British Columbia Library announced the B.C. 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 2023.
| Aldergrove Star Newspaper Digitization Project Part 2
Alder Grove Heritage Society $10,865.84 This project is the continuation of the digitization of the Aldergrove Star Newspaper project covering years 1992-2000, prior to its purchase by Black Press. The digital images will be uploaded to the UBC Historical Newspapers Collection and thus can be accessed by the general public. This portion of the project involves the digitization of 460 paper issues of the Aldergrove Star, totalling approximately 12,000 pages. |
| BC Motorsport History Digitization Project
Canadian Motorsports Historical Society $2000 The BC Motorsport History Digitization project will digitize 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. |
| Surrey Leader Photograph Digitization Project
City of Surrey Archives $15,000 The Surrey Leader Photograph Digitization Projects seeks to illuminate the transformative decades that led to Surrey’s formation as the second largest city in British Columbia. In 1992, approximately 95,500 photographic prints and negatives were donated to the Surrey Archives from the Surrey Leader, a local newspaper established in 1929. At present, 42,694 images have been processed, digitized, described and uploaded online. This project will facilitate access to an additional 15,000 negatives dating from the 1970s and the early 1980s through digitization and item level description work that will be uploaded onto the Archives’ online catalogue. |
| City of Vancouver Heritage Inventory Photographs Digitization Project (Phase Two)
City of Vancouver Archives $15,000 This project will digitize 7,000 City of Vancouver Planning Department photographs taken as part of heritage inventories carried out between 1964 and 1977 (predominantly 1974) and 1,000 City of Vancouver photographs taken circa 1980 documenting Vancouver intersections. The project will include some metadata augmentation to ensure existing item-level metadata is RAD- compliant. This project will complete work begun in 2022 with funding from the British Columbia History Digitization Program. |
| Thirty Years of Treaty Negotiations and Counting
First Nations Summit $15,000 The First Nations Summit will digitize 3,685 paper legacy files from 1991 – 2018 (in two groups during the project’s first phase) and 550 VHS tapes from 1990 – 2009 (in the second phase). Fully compliant with CAN-CSB 72.4-2017 standard on documentary digital evidence, the project will ensure ongoing and legally defensible access during treaty negotiations while preserving historically important material of 212 First Nations in British Columbia. Though these files must remain closed during ongoing treaty negotiations (many of which have been in process for 30 years), we preserve, manage, and steward these internationally important records until the day that they may be accessible to others. Phase I: 3,685 paper legacy files from 1991-2018 (Year 1) Phase II: 550 VHS tapes from 1990-2009 (Year 2) |
| Enhancing Digital Access to the Lumber Worker Newspaper
Kaatza Station Museum and Archives $9620.66 The project will provide equipment and staffing for the in-house digitization of 322 issues of the BC/Western Canadian Lumber Worker between 1960 and 1980. The newspaper was produced by the Western Canada Regional Council of the forestry labour union the International Woodworkers of America. This will be phase one of a digitization program that will make all I.W.A. newspapers and photographs held by the Kaatza Historical Society available online through the BCDHP Arca digital repository. The project will also enhance the digitization capacity of the Kaatza Museum and Archives, which will then facilitate the digitization of other collections. |
| Nelson Daily News Digitization Project – Phase 5
Nelson Museum, Archives and Gallery $4814.82 The project is to digitize the pages of nine years and six months of the Nelson Daily News newspaper from May 1, 1959 to November 30, 1968. 15 microfilm Master reels of the newspaper will be loaned from BC Archives. 20 copy microfilm reels with provided from Nelson Museum’s 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. |
| Behind the Lens: The Okamura and Banno Families
Nikkei National Museum & Cultural Centre $14,500 Behind the Lens: The Okamura and Banno Families is NNMCC’s 2023-2024 digitization project which will make accessible the significant materials from the Banno Family Collection. Spanning 1910-1998 and three generations, this family collection centers around Mata Banno née Okamura and her family, including: New Westminster photographer Paul Okamura; husband Dr. Edward Banno, a dentist; and son Robert Banno, a lawyer with an expertise in Japan-Canada business and trade, and Indigenous law. With continued support from the Banno family, 1806 photographs, 12 sumie (ink) paintings, 50 cm textual records, and 30 objects are selected to be digitized and made accessible online. |
| Digitizing the United Church Archives of Chinese and Japanese Canadian Communities in B.C.
Pacific Mountain Regional Council Archives $3695 This project is intended to make information-rich photographs and textual records associated with the early Chinese and Japanese Canadian communities in B.C. accessible to the general public. The majority of the documents relate to the Chinese Canadian communities, but include Japanese Canadian content that will complement the BCHDP Vancouver Japanese UCC digitization project from 2019-20. Records relate to:
This project’s plan is to digitize 475 pages of textual records (1886-1981) and 600 photographs (1888-1962). |
| Similkameen Star Newspaper Digitization
Princeton and District Museum and Archives $7525.50 This project is the continuation of the digitization of the Similkameen Star Newspaper. This collection of 2781 editions spanning the years 1900 – 1953 is held by the Princeton and District Museum and Archives Society. Approximately 25% of the papers have been digitized and are hosted on the UBC Library Historical Newspapers Collection site. The financial contribution by the Museum Society has been significantly supported by the Rotary Club of Princeton. |
| Revelstoke Museum and Archives Map Digitization Project
Revelstoke Museum and Archives $2000 This project will digitize and provide online access to approximately 290 archival maps. The resulting digital files will be made available as part of the B.C. Regional Digitized History portal, specific to Revelstoke Museum and Archives’ online repository collection via BCELN’s Arca shared service. |
| Building the Socialist Practical Dream in BC: Early Documents of Sointula Co-operative Store Association
Sointula Museum and Historical Society $3350 The Sointula Museum and Historical Society will digitize and publish 75 pages and 10 photos documenting the founding of the Sointula Co-operative Store Association in 1909. Dates span 1909-1960 and include:
|
| Dr. Norman Buchignani and Dr. Doreen Indra fonds (Phase 1)
South Asian Studies Institute $15,000 Phase I of this project aims to digitize, preserve, and provide open access to Dr. Norman Buchignani and Dr. Doreen Indra fonds in the South Asian Canadian Digital Archive (https://sacda.ca/). The fonds consists of 2.5 linear feet of archival materials of the earliest key research work and primary sources related to social histories of South Asian Canadians. The materials were created and collected by both Dr. Buchignani and Dr. Indra and cover the period from 1898-1984. The fonds includes diverse materials including handwritten research notes, index and reference cards, correspondence, interviews, ephemera, commemorative publications, microfilms, photographic negatives, government documents, magazine and newspaper articles, reports, and academic dissertations. |
| Naxaxalhts’i Collection Digitization Project
Stó:lō Library and Archives $15,000 The Naxaxalhst’i Collection Digitization Project will seek to digitize approximately 17.04m of textual records and 228 maps which were compiled during Naxaxalhts’i’s various roles with the Stó:lō Service Agency. Naxaxalhts’i served this agency from 1985 to the present, but the content of these records contains valuable cultural information dating back to pre-contact. Records will be digitized into PDF or TIFF files and saved onto a Hard Drive purchased for the purpose of the project and on our internal servers. Naxaxalhts’i will be retained to provide insight into the work captured in the records to provide a full account of events. |
| Newman Western Canadian Cookbook Collection, B.C. titles Phase 2
University of the Fraser Valley Library $1795.30 Following the successful completion of the digitization of 80 cookbooks related to British Columbia in the 2021-2022 grant year, the UFV Library plans to digitize 42 additional titles from the Newman Western Canadian Cookbook Collection (NWCC) which were recently acquired through significant donations to the collection. These 42 titles all relate to B.C. and are within the public domain. These titles will be added to the already digitized titles from the NWCC which are accessible in UFV’s institutional repository, HarvestIR. This proposed next stage of digitization will involve digitizing 42 new cookbooks resulting in approximately 3155 TIFF master digital files, 42 searchable multipage PDFs, and accompanying derivative files, XML metadata, and OCR text files for an estimated total of 105 GB of digital files (added to the existing NWCC files). |
| Digitization of the Victoria Daily Times newspaper: 1958-1963
University of Victoria Libraries $12,605 With thanks to previous funding from the BC History Digitization Program (BCHDP), the digitization of the Victoria Daily Times from 1945 to 1958 is now complete, and UVic Libraries will be continuing the digitization of this important historical resource from March 1958 to August 1963. The funding will be used with the aim to process, digitize, split, and optimize 80,000 pages from 80 microfilm reels. By making these resources freely open and available, this would augment and enhance the existing digital newspaper collections and create further impact for comparative study and research. |
| VHEC teacher’s guides digitization project
Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre $1560 The Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre has created teacher’s guides to complement exhibitions and support classroom learning since 1994. The guides are written in alignment with the BC curriculum and provide educators with activities, discussion prompts, readings, primary documents and other resources. Currently, older teacher’s guides advertised on vhec.org are only available in print format in the library. The VHEC will be digitizing 17 outdated teacher’s guides so that they may be better contextualized and made available while enhancing the visibility of newer guides that align with the BC redesigned curriculum. |
| John Vance Digitization Project and Online Exhibition
Vancouver Police Museum and Archives $10,668 John Vance (1884 -1964) was one of the first forensic scientists in North America. Working in the historic building that houses the museum, for 42 years he helped solve some of the most sensational murders of the 20th Century that took place in Vancouver and other locales throughout British Columbia. The John Vance Fonds is one of the most significant archival collections in our holdings, representing a major part of our building’s past and BC’s history. The project will enable digitization of this fonds consisting of 14 boxes of personal and professional records that date 1903-1963. It is estimated that there are 8,550 individual pages of textual records to digitize, along with 100 photographs and 4 negatives. The digitized records would be made available online through the use of Arca, promoted through the VPMA museum website, and the finding aid would be made available on MemoryBC, the provincial archival records database. The digitization of the records would provide wider public access to the records and would further support an online exhibition. |