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Address
Room 103
Irving K. Barber Learning Centre
1961 East Mall
Vancouver, BC
V6T 1Z1
BC Historical Books
A Ramble in British Columbia
There are over 1,300 items in B.C. Historical Books, a collection showcasing the history of British Columbia from 1783 to 1952 (and, eventually, beyond). Early works include travelogues that tell tales of grand landscapes, meeting strangers, and surviving in the wilderness. One book that caught our attention is B.C. 1887 : A Ramble in British Columbia. Have you read the Lazy Tour […]
BC Timber Trade: Big Trees and Bigger Dreams
British Columbia was built, in part, on the timber trade. Logging, timber, and surrounding work is something you can find in the collections at DI over and over and over again, starting from 1846 all the way to 2016. In this blog post we’re going to take a look back to when big dreams for […]
Explore Open Collections: B.C. Books
It’s time again for another “Exploring Open Collections” installment! This week we’re taking a look at one of our biggest collections (and one that’s featured) B.C. Historical Books. Previous to the Open Collections launch B.C. Historical Books was known as B.C. Bibliography and was a standalone site associated with Digital Initiatives – now it’s been […]
British Columbia, the Gold Rush, and the Klondike
The Gold Rush (1858 to 1863) was an important period in British Columbia’s history that brought thousands of prospectors and adventurers to the province. All the activity produced by the Gold Rush led to significant impacts on BC’s people and land, such as conflicts with the native peoples who inhibited the land, increased development throughout BC, […]
British Columbia 1882/83 Directory
One of our ongoing projects at Digital Initiatives is the the BC Bibliography project. For this project we are digitizing thousands of books, pamphlets, and other publications with historical value concerning British Columbia. These run the gamut from political speeches and documents, to travelogues, to books concerning aboriginal languages (plus lots more!). While many of […]
Traveling in the BC Bibliography collection
As a co-op student working at UBC Library Digital Initiatives Unit I get to see incredibly interesting materials that I would never see otherwise. Have I ever thought, for example, of reading anything by Daniel M. Gordon? No, never, not before digitizing his book Mountain and Prairie, A Journey from Victoria to Winnipeg, Via Place […]
BC Bibliography Metadata Mania
Unlike the majority of the content on the Digitizers’ blog, this post does not involve pretty pictures or interesting nuggets of historical information. Instead, it will cover a very different aspect of the work performed in the Digital Initiatives unit: Metadata. To be more specific, descriptive metadata; less glamorous perhaps than the maps and images […]
Picturesque Victoria, British Columbia
From the book Picturesque Victoria, British Columbia. These photographic souvenir books were popular with tourism and development organizations from the late 19th and in to the 20th century. Have a look at the entire book here. Part of the British Columbia Bibliography project.
All ‘Round the World (1860-1862)
All ‘Round the World is a three account by William Ainsworth of his travels around the world in the early 1860s. Chock-full of beautifully crafted historic engravings of exotic locales like the Ateshgah of Baku and Mt. Etna, we enjoyed this set so much that we decided to do some high quality scans of some of our favorites […]
Invest in Kerrisdale!
This advertisement from a 1910 issue of Opportunities magazine made us all wish we’d been around to take advantage of the deal… The full anthology of Opportunities issues will be available to view in the upcoming BC Bibliography digital collection.
