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UVic Libraries put BC history online
By Patty Pitts
 Petter (L) and assistant Kim Shortreed-Webb with the Sylvester diary
The University of Victoria’s Special Collections and Archives are celebrating the province’s 150th birthday by making significant materials in their collections accessible with just the click of a mouse. With the assistance of a grant from the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre, UVic is digitizing books, maps and other documents that are especially relevant to Victoria’s and the province’s early history.
“UVic’s Special Collections is a pioneer in making raw history available online,” says Dr. John Lutz (history). “The maps, books and extremely rare ephemera being made available will help students and researchers understand the impact of the gold rush on Victoria and its subsequent growth. Victoria was the entry point for the British Columbia gold fields and, of all the communities in BC, it benefited the most.”
Materials chosen for the project include: five original hand-coloured maps of Vancouver Island circa 1855–9 made by the colony’s surveyor-general, Joseph D. Pemberton; six early tourist pamphlets of Victoria, including captioned photographs; Victoria Illustrated (1891), a rare book published by The Colonist containing many contemporary illustrations and tables depicting Victoria life, people, resources, industry and architecture; and the diary of Victoria pioneer and amateur historian Frank Sylvester (1834–1908) containing 150 entries on contemporary life, travels and ships in Victoria during that period. Other documents and ephemera of Sylvester’s, including historical essays, photographs and business records, will also be digitized.
“The Ike Barber grant has made it possible to hire a graduate student who will digitize some very challenging documents,” says UVic’s Digital Projects Librarian Chris Petter. “The library will in turn store these data in its new digital management system so that users can find specific images and text through a simple Google search.”
The documents will be available on the library’s image display system.
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