Explore unique highlights from UBC’s Open Collections, as well as insights into the work of the Digitization Centre. From announcements of new projects and collections to behind-the-scenes looks at our digitization process, we share the stories and hidden gems that inspire us in our efforts to preserve and make accessible diverse materials.
Images in Stereo
Posted on Mar 05, 2014 by Matthew Murray
Some of the images in our collection are really cool but others, while still cool, can be considerably more mystifying without knowledge of how or why they were created. An example of this are the stereographs that appear in the Arkley Croquet Collection and the Chung Collection. These images generally look something like this: If you’ve never seen […]
Explore Open Collections: Chinese Rare Books Collection
Posted on Feb 21, 2014 by Rob
The Chinese Rare Books Collection, also known as the Puban Project, is a collaborative venture between the UBC Library Digitization Centre, the UBC Asian Library and the Sun Yat-sen Library, part of the Guangzhou Library in Guangdong Province, China. The UBC Library houses several collections of rare Chinese material including the Puban. The core of […]
Digital Initiatives on Flickr!
Posted on Feb 17, 2014 by Matthew Murray
You may not know it, but a few months ago we set up a Flickr account! We’ve chosen several collections that we feel have really great images and have started to upload them so that more people can see the work that we’re doing. If you see any images you like, we’d love for you […]
World War I British Press Photograph Collection
Posted on Feb 03, 2014 by Matthew Murray
We’ve recently began to digitize material in the World War I British press photograph collection held at Rare Books and Special Collections. The photos were intended for publication, and most feature a caption on the reverse. The photos are divided into folders based around certain places and topics such as “Mesopotamia” and “Battle of the Ridges”. While […]
Exceptions
Posted on Jan 27, 2014 by pughchr
A frequent challenge when making digital collections is determining how best to represent a digital object, so that it is true to the original object but still functions properly in its digital form. For example, in the case of newspapers, it can be a challenge to determining how best to represent the two page spread. […]
BC Sessional Papers available online
Posted on Jan 08, 2014 by mmlam
Digital Initiatives in partnership with Humanities and Social Sciences and the Legislative Library of British Columbia has completed digitization of the first 10 years (1876-1886) of the British Columbia Sessional Papers. The Sessional Papers are important provincial legislative documents that capture the economical, historical, political and cultural atmosphere of British Columbia history. The collection includes […]
The Arkley Croquet Collection has gone digital
Posted on by mmlam
A former player on the U.S. National Croquet Team, Tremaine Arkley started collecting illustrations, engravings, photographs, cartoons, paintings and other materials around the game of croquet with the sole idea of “saving the history of the game through art”, as he said in a interview with Croquet World Online (http://www.croquetworld.com/people/collecting.asp). Now that a large selection […]
Holiday Images in UBC Library’s Digital Collections
Posted on Dec 19, 2013 by mikec
‘Tis the season to unearth a few Christmas themed gems from our digital collections. Happy Holidays from the digitization team!
Creston Review: New in BC Historical Newspapers
Posted on Nov 29, 2013 by mikec
In partnership with Creston & District Musuem & Archives we have added issues of the Creston Review from 1909 to 1935 to the BC Historical Newspapers. The Creston Review was established in 1908 by J. J. Atherton, and was the first newspaper serving the Creston Valley. For many years, the Review was Creston’s […]
On the Crest of the Wave
Posted on Nov 27, 2013 by esquin
The Digital Initiatives Unit has digitized thousands of rare books and images, and still, in the midst of all these fantastic items, many images stand out and never cease to amaze us. We had not thought of this series of 12 photographs of Igor Stravinsky in a while, and when it was mentioned during a […]
