Digitizers’ Blog
The Canadian Rockies
Did you know that mountains cover 75 per cent of British Columbia[i]? Like the beaches we introduced in April, mountains offer beautiful scenery in summer. Today, we will focus on the Canadian Rockies depicted and described in our digitized photographs, illustrations, and books in Open Collections. Uno Langmann Family Collection of British Columbia Photographs […]
Explore Open Collections: BC Historical Documents
Next Monday is BC Day! To celebrate, this post will introduce our BC Historical Documents collection and explore the early history of BC. Rare Books and Special Collections in the UBC Library houses an abundance of original documents related to the development of British Columbia and its economic, social, political and cultural history. We have […]
Streets in Downtown Vancouver
In the Uno Langmann Family Collection of British Columbia Photographs, we have historic photographs depicting street scenery in Vancouver in the early 1900s. This post will explore some of our favourite photographs, showing the major streets in Vancouver. We hope you can identify where the pictures were taken and how the streets have changed since […]
Advertisements in Newspapers
Historical newspapers are good resources for researching the political, social and cultural trends in local areas during specific historical periods. One of the interesting components are advertisements, which contain information about local businesses, and popular industries around the time. Like today, the papers had designed their advertisements to catch readers’ eyes and attract new customers. […]
BC-related Dictionaries
The BC Historical Books collection contains the digitized bibliographies of British Columbia. In the collection, there are 35 dictionaries related to BC History. Here, we will introduce some of our favourite ones! City Directories Do you have the White or Yellow Pages at home? UBC Rare Books and Special Collections has a collection of city […]
Fishing in Open Collections
Open Collections has several collections related to fishing. Today, we will introduce a few of these collections and our favourite digitized items! Fisherman Publishing Society Collection In the Fisherman Publishing Society Collection, we have digitized around 4,000 photographs taken from 1862 to 1989. The Fisherman Publishing Society formed in 1937 and had published a bi-weekly […]
Explore Open Collections: Tairiku Nippō (Continental Daily News)
According to the 2016 Census, 1.6% of the Vancouver metropolitan population identify as having Japanese ethnic origin.[i] The first wave of immigrants from Japan arrived in Canada in late 19th century, and the majority of them resided in British Columbia. As their primary information resource, a Japanese-Canadian newspaper, Tairiku Nippō (大陸日報, Continental Daily News) was […]
Streetcars before Buses: British Columbia Electric Railway
Buses, SkyTrain, SeaBus, and the West Coast Express are the main transit options in the Greater Vancouver area today. However, Open Collections has many images of the railroads and streetcars that used to line our streets. From 1897 until 1958, the British Columbia Electric Railway (BCER) operated streetcars and interurbans, which were the major transportation […]
History of UBC Library Buildings
Today, UBC Library has 15 branches in 12 locations that provide a variety of programs and services. The Digitization Centre is located in Irving K. Barber Learning Centre (IKBLC) on UBC’s Vancouver campus. A previous post explored how IKBLC has changed since the first Main Library was built, so we will delve into the history […]
Oldest photos in Open Collections
The first photographic technologies were invented and developed during the 1830s and 1840s. Among more than 56,000 available photographs in UBC Open Collections, many of our oldest photographs were taken in the early periods of photographic history. 1854: Early timber cruisers beside their makeshift accommodation MacMillan Bloedel Limited fonds contain the records of the MacMillan […]