Digitizers’ Blog

Cats and Dogs of the Uno Langmann Family Collection
The Uno Langmann Family Collection of British Columbia Photographs has over six thousand images that are currently available online. They represent various aspects of B.C.’s social and cultural history during the 19th and 20th centuries. With all of the scary news that goes on in the world, why not take a moment to browse images […]

House Styles
Many times, when we at the Digitization Centre are attempting to provide a date range for an image, we often rely on using details from within the image to make an estimate. One of the easier and more reliable details to watch out for are homes. The design of a house allows us to pattern […]

Food Prices of the 1900s in British Columbia
With recent skyrocketing food prices, many people find themselves reminiscing of the grocery shopping of yesteryear. The BC Historical Newspaper collection provides many great snapshots of grocery store advertisements throughout the 1900s. Here is a collated selection of various newspapers advertising from around British Columbia. One advertisement was chosen for each decade, and multiple newspapers […]

UBC Library’s Colour our Collections Project
As part of a project to bring the public closer to UBC’s digital and physical collections, UBC Library has joined the Colour Our Collections campaign along with other museums and libraries around the world. Organized by The New York Academy of Medicine, the Colour our Collections project first took off in 2016 to offer a unique way […]

An insight into the digitization of The Shakespeare First Folio Collection
This week, as a celebration of William Shakespeare’s birthday (April 23, 1564), the Digitization Centre would like to share some of the experiences of digitizing one of the extremely rare books in the UBC Library’s collections: the first edition of “William Shakespeare’s Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies” published in 1623. We asked one of our graduate students, Natalia […]

Explore Open Collections: French Revolution Collection
The Digitization Centre would like to share some exciting news: a rare collection of original pamphlets from the French Revolution is now available on the UBC Open Collections! Total of 114 items were digitized from the UBC Library’s French Revolution Collection which includes pamphlets, plays and documents from between 1787 and 1799, a period of […]

Anyox, British Columbia: A town that got lost, but permeates our collection
“Anyox was born quietly but she went out with a bang – or at least the bang heralded the end” (Loudon, 1973, p. 97). That’s how Peter Loudon (1930 – 19-?), one of the 480 settlers born in this copper town describes the brief history and the miscalculated mining explosion that preceded the rapid economic […]

Research in UBC Open Collections: Sex and Migration in the Transpacific Underground
The Digitization Centre is always thrilled to learn about the various impressive research findings made through UBC Library’s Open Collections, in particular those collections we have digitized. Knowing how they have impacted the investigation and the educational outcomes of those studies is very gratifying! Today, we would like to share the fascinating open educational resource […]

The Haweis Family fonds and Lionel Haweis’ contributions
The arts and culture were a central aspect of the Haweis family (pronounced “Hoyse”) and their collection reflects that very prominently. The fonds includes materials created, received, or collected by various members of the family including Lionel Haweis, his parents Reverend Hugh Reginald and Mary Eliza Haweis, sister Hugolin Haweis and brother Stephen Haweis, and […]

Aviation photographs from first half of 1900s
This February, the Digitization Centre has completed the digitization of nearly one hundred historical photographs related to aviation dated prior to the 1950s. These photos are part of the Uno Langmann Family Collection of B.C. Photographs and are now available to view for anyone interested in the aviation industry! Amongst many incredible photographs, there are […]