BC History Digitization Program: Complete our survey
The BC History Digitization Program is interested in getting feedback from current and prospective applicants in the form of a survey. We would like to invite you to fill out our survey (approximately 5 minutes) to provide your experiences about the program.
The responses and data from the survey will be used to assess the program and to make appropriate changes and improvements to better support applicants and their projects. Your responses are confidential meaning that any identifying information will not be shared outside of the program team.
To access the survey, please click here (https://ubc.ca1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_0vTI7x1QYgR2QN7). If you have any questions, please contact the BCHDP Coordinator, Mimi Lam.
The survey will close on Friday, October 30th @ 5:00 pm PST. Thank you in advance for your time.
BC History Digitization Program: 2021/2022 Call for applications
The British Columbia History Digitization Program (BCHDP) is now accepting applications for project funding. The program, initiated by the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre in 2006, provides matching funds to support digitization projects that make unique British Columbia content freely available. Since its inception in 2006, the BCHDP has awarded more than $2 million of matching funds for more than 250 projects.
In 2020, the program awarded more than $160,000 for 19 projects. The wealth and diversity of unique British Columbia content to be digitized is impressive. The BCHDP will be accepting applications for the 2021/2022 funding year. Applicants can receive up to $15,000 of matching funds for their projects. Multi-year projects are accepted with each successive year going through the adjudication process.
Applications are due by Friday, December 18, 2020 @ 5:00 pm PST. Information about the application process as well as the guidelines and application form are available on the BCHDP website (https://ikblc-16mar2016.sites.olt.ubc.ca/?p=18772). It is highly recommended that applicants consult the Guidelines and Instructions as well as accessing the Application Form because both are updated annually based on feedback from applicants and the program adjudicators.
For more information about the program and to view past projects, please visit the BC History Digitization Programwebsite (https://ikblc.ubc.ca/initiatives/bcdigitinfo/).
The Community Scholars Program
The Community Scholars Program (CSP) provides BC non-profits and charitable organizations with free access to academic journals and research related to their fields.
Many of the 170,000 non-profits and charitable organizations in Canada are doing critical work on social issues but most have little or no access to academic journals or research unless they are affiliated with a university. CSP provides BC organizations with access to more than 20,000 academic titles at no cost. In addition, the program provides research support, consultations with libraries, communities of practice through workshops and journal clubs.
UBC Library, through the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre, joins SFU Library, Vancouver Island University, the University of Northern British Columbia and Thompson Rivers University as a Community Scholars partner to share involvement in the program with their non-profit networks. During UBC’s pilot year sponsorship there will be limited placements available for qualifying organizations that are referred to the program by the UBC. If you have a UBC affiliation and would like to recommend an organization or for more information please contact Kristen Wong (kristen.wong@ubc.ca) or Aleha McCauley (aleha.mccauley@ubc.ca).
Announcing the 2020/2021 BC History Digitization Program Projects
Nineteen projects have been selected as the successful recipients of the 2020 -2021 B.C. History Digitization Program (BCHDP) funding awards.
The digitization program, an initiative of the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre, was launched in 2006. It provides matching funds that help libraries, archives, museums and other organizations digitize unique historical items, including images, print and audio visual materials.
The Irving K. Barber Learning Centre funding totalled $160,000 for the 2020 – 2021 round. Altogether, the B.C. History Digitization Program has provided more than $1 million for more than 100 projects throughout British Columbia.
This year’s diverse range of projects include the digitization of several historical newspapers (Kelowna, Nelson, Oliver and Saanich), audio recordings from Pender Guy radio program, the Museum of Vancouver’s trades and businesses collection , a bilingual newspaper Patrika (English/Punjabi), as well as the Judith Marcuse Dance collection.
Please note, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, some projects are deferring their start date until further notice.
Congratulations to this year’s recipients!
To view a complete listing of the projects and their descriptions:
BC History Digitization Program – 2020 Projects
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 2020.
Please note, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, some projects are deferring their start date until further notice.
| Valley Voice Digitization Project
Arrow Lakes Historical Society $7,373 The Arrow Lakes Historical Society will undertake the scanning and digitization of 275 issues of The Valley Voice newspaper into searchable, downloadable digital files. The Valley Voice is a biweekly regional community newspaper that covers current affairs and promotes local events and businesses in the Slocan, Arrow Lakes and North Kootenay Lake Valleys. |
| Digitization of the Photographs of British Columbia by George Hunter, RCA
Canadian Heritage Photography Foundation $5,629 The Canadian Heritage Photography Foundation (CHPF) will digitize 2000 images of British Columbia by the renowned Canadian photographer George Hunter, RCA. The images reflect the industry, culture and landscape of the province from 1950-2010. The digitized negatives and slides will be rehoused and preserved in the CHPF archive, and the images will be uploaded on-line and freely made available to the public. |
| Digitizing Microfilm of City Council and Committee Agendas and Minutes
City of Port Coquitlam $10,052 The project will digitize approximately 130,000 pages of microfiche that hold the City of Port Coquitlam’s Council and Committee Agenda’s and Minutes from the 1972 – 1989. |
| Surrey Leader Photograph Digitization Project
City of Surrey Archives (City of Surrey) $15,000 The Surrey Leader Photograph Digitization Project 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, 25,000 images have been processed, digitized, described and uploaded online. This project will facilitate access to an additional 16,500 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. |
| Pender Guy fonds audio records digitization
City of Vancouver Archives (City of Vancouver) $15,000 The Pender Guy fonds audio records digitization project will digitize 437 audio tapes containing radio programs and background research material created by the Pender Guy radio collection from 1976 – 1981. |
| George Mercer Dawson Digitization Project
McGill University (The Royal Institution for the Advancement of Learning/McGill University) $7,481 The project consists in digitizing the George Mercer Dawson series of the Dawson-Harrington Family fonds. This series contains 3.3 metres of documents that include 86 notebooks and diaries; 13,211 pages of correspondence and writing; 374 watercolours and drawings, spanning the years 1871 to 1901. Most of those documents were created by George Mercer Dawson during his numerous field trips to British Columbia or relates to those. The digitization will result in free online access to the collection via our catalogue. |
| Vancouver Trades and Businesses Digitization Project
Museum of Vancouver (Vancouver Museum Society) $14,956 The Museum of Vancouver holds the history of the city as told through the stories of the artefacts in the collection. This project will digitize 1,440 artefacts related to Vancouver trades and businesses spanning in date from the late 1800s to the 1980s. The Vancouver trades and business collection documents the socio-economic history of the city of Vancouver and the city’s role in the development of the province. These artefacts hold the unique stories of Vancouver businesses and Vancouverites. |
| 20 in 2020
Nikkei National Museum (Nikkei National Museum & Cultural Centre) $12,322 The 20 in 2020 project will digitize 3,800 photographs & 35mm negatives that capture the life of the Nikkei National Museum & Cultural Centre (NNMCC) from its pre-history in the 1980s to the present day. 2020 marks the 20th anniversary of the opening of the NNMCC; and 2021 celebrates 40 years of the Japanese Canadian community’s dream to establish a community archives to honour, preserve, and share Japanese Canadian history and heritage for a better Canada. The photographs follow the archives from a small office on Broadway to our purpose-built space today: a journey seen through ground-breaking ceremonies and community gatherings. |
| Oliver Chronicle Newspaper Digitization Project
Oliver & District Museum (Oliver & District Heritage Society) $7,947.50 This project will digitize, store, and make 4,417 issues of the Oliver Chronicle community newspaper keyword-searchable and freely accessible online. The newspapers span 1938 to 2016 and are frequently-requested by locals and researchers across the province. |
| Rungh Archive Collection
Rungh Cultural Society $3,414.77 The Rungh Archive Collection is a digitization of the print (posters and ephemera), audio and project files related to the publication of the Rungh Magazine, a South Asian Journal of Culture Comment and Criticism, from 1992 – 1999, as well projects/events produced by the Rungh Cultural Society. |
| Peninsula News Review Digitization Project
Sidney Museum (Sidney Museum and Archives Society) $9,000 The Peninsula News Review (PNR) Digitization project will digitize and make freely searchable online 46 rolls of 35mm microfilm containing past issues of the PNR newspaper, which covered the Saanich Peninsula and surrounding Gulf Islands, spanning 1912 through 2002. |
| Judith Marcuse Dance Collection
Simon Fraser University Library (Simon Fraser University) $6,900 This project will digitize photographs, posters, promotional materials and publications from the archives of dancer, choreographer, director, and producer Judith Marcuse and will make the digital files and accompanying descriptive metadata available online through the SFU Library’s website. The material, held by the Library’s Special Collections and Rare Books division, documents not only Marcuse’s career but the development of contemporary dance in Vancouver over the past four decades. |
| Punjabi Patrika Digitization Project Part 2
The Reach Gallery Museum Abbotsford (Abbotsford Cultural Centre) $4,063 The Punjabi Patrika, published in Abbotsford, BC, is one of only two bilingual, Punjabi/English newspapers published in Canada and includes unique perspectives into BC’s South Asian community. An archive of the the Patrika was donated to The Reach by owner/publisher Andy Sidhu in 2018. The Patrika archive enriches The Reach’s archival holdings significantly, in that it represents the first local news publication with a specifically South Asian perspective. |
| Nelson Daily News Digitization Project – Phase 2
Touchstones Nelson: Museum of Art and History (Nelson and District Museum, Archives, Art Gallery and Historical Society) $7,736 The project will digitize 16 years of the Nelson Daily News newspaper from April 1, 1920 to April 30, 1936. 60 microfilm master reels of the newspaper will be loaned from BC Archives. The information on these reels will be digitally scanned by the UBC Library Digitization Centre. The digital collection will be hosted on the UBC Library’s Open Collections BC Historical Newspapers Collection. |
| Okanagan Newspaper Digitization: Kelowna Courier (1950-1968) & Penticton Herald (1954-1959)
University of British Columbia Okanagan Campus Library (University of British Columbia) $7,500 This project will result in the digitization and provision of online access to approximately 5,100 issues or 65,300 pages of searchable content from microfilmed copies of the Kelowna Courier(1950 – 1965) and Penticton Herald (1954 – 1959) newspapers. The resulting digital files will be made available as part of the Digitized Okanagan History portal (doh.arcabc.ca) on BCLEN’s Arca platform. |
| “Coming about”: The films of Karl Spreitz
University of Victoria Libraries (University of Victoria) $15,000 “Coming about”: The films of Karl Spreitz will digitize 123 analogue films and 150 accompanying photographic images to promote access to British Columbia artist Karl Spreitz’s extensive film and photography archive, highlight his important work, and provide an enhanced and complete vision of his art and life to both academic and non-academic audiences. |
| The Gesher Project exhibition records
Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre (Vancouver Holocaust Centre Society for Education and Remembrance) $1,650 The Gesher Project was a unique and innovative project undertaken by three Vancouver Holocaust survivors, five child survivors of the Holocaust and ten adult children of Holocaust survivors. They explored these experiences through painting, writing, and discussion assisted by facilitators Dr. Alina Wydra, Linda Dayan Frimer, Dale Adams-Segal and Reisa Schneider. The project culminated with the mounting of The Gesher Project exhibit, which toured to eleven cities across Canada. “Gesher,” the Hebrew word for bridge, reflects the project’s goal of working together to bridge the generations and to use creative approaches as a means of healing Holocaust trauma. |
| Cirkut Panoramas Digitization Project
Vancouver Public Library $5,500 The Vancouver Public Library (VPL) Cirkut Panoramas Digitization Project will digitize and index 50 panorama negatives from our collection. These were produced by the Dominion Photo Co. of Vancouver from approximately 1918 to 1950. The use of the No. 8 model Cirkut camera allowed Dominion’s photographers to produce spectacular panoramic images depicting the emerging urban landscape of Vancouver, its burgeoning commercial interests, and the spectacular geography of the province’s lower mainland. Today, these unique images are seriously at risk due to the fragility of the film base and their physical neglect prior to acquisition by the library. |
| Vancouver Performance Art Objects
Western Front Society / Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery $4,000 Vancouver Performance Art Objects will digitize 175 items from the archives and collections of Western Front and the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery relating to performances by Vancouver artists in the 1970s. |