BC historical newspapers

Happy Halloween from the Digitization Centre!
In celebration of Halloween coming up tomorrow, enjoy these spooky and festive images from Open Collections. From the Tremaine Arkley Croquet Collection, three “modern” witches gather around a cauldron: This woodcut of a shrouded skeleton, by the artist Walter Crane, could serve as some last-minute costume inspiration: Watch out for this creepy spider […]

Subjects in Our Collections: Canadian Studies
British Columbiana and Canadiana are two of our largest areas of collection development. Our collections hold items that explore a range of disciplines related to these topics, including history, business, sociology, literature, and more. For example: BC Historical Books: This collection contains almost 2,000 books about and/or published in British Columbia. Three bibliographies of British […]

Arches in Vancouver
On September 18, 1912, H.R.H. Prince Arthur William Patrick Albert, Duke of Connaught, then Governor General of Canada, was in Vancouver for the grand opening of the Cambie Bridge. The bridge’s official name was Connaught Bridge, to honor the Duke, but the unofficial name stuck. This is what The Islander said about the Duke’s visit […]

A New Year Calls for a New Impact Report!
We are pleased to present the Digitization Centre Impact and Activity Report for 2016-2017! This report highlights the Digitization Centre’s key projects, partnerships and user engagement trends for the 2016-2017 fiscal year. In 2016-2017, Open Collections accounted for 15% of the Library’s unique pageviews. That 15% totals 3.9 million pageviews on Open Collections alone! The […]

In Memoriam
The documents in our collections contain concerns ranging from global to individual. While exploring the collections this week, I was struck by the obituaries, remembrances, and memorials— here is a selection. This Obituary from The Prospector (1896) is front page news, and followed by reports of gold fields in the Kootenays. Mrs. Ellison was remembered […]

BC Historical Newspapers Update- 2017
Not surprisingly, we at the Digitization Centre are a big fan of analytics. Data about how people use the data and images we produce? Our knees are weak. What we’ve learned is that our blog post from 2013 regarding the BC Historical Newspapers Collection is one of the most often used, so […]

Interesting People in Our Collections
Ada Cavendish A famous actress of her time (1939-1895), Cavendish was known for playing Mercy Merrick in New Magdalen and Mrs. Darlington in For Love or Money, among many others. She performed and produced in the UK and toured in America, notably brining the plays of Wilkie Collins to popularity the States. Luther McCarty McCarty was a champion American boxer who […]

Newspapers: Now & Then
Our collection of BC Historical Newspapers brings a lot of traffic to our website—and it feeds a lot of our blog posts, too! We get lost flipping through the pages of time, but the papers always find a way to bring us back to the present. For instance, the way newspapers were totally the precursor […]

It’s Reading Week here at UBC!
It’s hotly debated whether students use this week to catch up on the homework they’ve neglected, or indulge in the reading-for-fun they put off during the term, or to do absolutely no reading and enjoy all the other activities that Vancouver has to offer. Ironic or not, we’re running with reading as this week’s theme for exploring our collections. Before we share a few of […]

Indulging Our Sweet Tooth
Perhaps you’re the type to want a sugary afternoon pick-me-up. Maybe you look forward to a sweet end after a long, tiring day. Perchance the ides of winter has you craving comfort foods. Or, you just might subscribe to the let-them-eat-cake lifestyle. Whatever the case, it’s not quite the end of January, and if you’re one of the 65% of Canadians looking to use the new year […]