Colonial North American Project at Harvard University

Harvard University has embarked on a remarkable multi-year project to digitize and make freely available all 17th and 18th century archival records and publications from all its campus repositories relating to life in colonial North America. This ambitious enterprise is called the Colonial North Amercian Project at Harvard University.

In addition to the collection itself, there are also a series of thematic essays which provide deeper insight into the contents of this digital library and archives.

It appears that the public interface is powered by the Omeka open source software.

1912 Goad Fire Insurance Plan now available in Vanmap

Vanmap, a geomatics tool from the City of Vancouver, now includes a layer representing Goad’s 1912 Fire Insurance Plan contributed by the City of Vancouver Archives. The fire insurance plan data is also available through the city's Open Data Catalogue. You can read an extensive description by the city archives about the fire insurance plan.

Royal BC Museum launches crowd-sourcing transcription project

From the announcement circulated to mailing lists such as ARCAN-L:

Today, to celebrate National Volunteer Week, the Royal BC Museum launched Transcribe (transcribe.royalbcmuseum.bc.ca), a crowd-sourcing website that invites the public to transcribe valuable historical records from our archival collection.

Alice turns 150

The sesquicentennial of the publication of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland is 2015. Happy birthday! The Lewis Carroll Society of North America has information on events and commemorations for Alice150.

Denmark presents digitized cultural heritage to the world

According to this BBC News story, Denmark has opened its digitized cultural heritage of over two million images and other types of content to the world. The site is called arkivdk. The content comes from over 500 Danish archives. There appears to be no English language interface as yet.

Census of Canada 1921 available for free at Ancestry.ca

In one of those P3 (public-private partnership) deals, the first phase in the release of the 1921 Census of Canada was announced by the Library and Archives Canada on August 9, 2013. Here's how it reads:

Canadians can now browse the 1921 Census data of the Canadian population, free of charge on Ancestry.ca.
The 1921 Census includes 197,529 images; it is therefore a massive electronic file to prepare and make accessible. Once it is fully indexed, this census will be the largest source of Canadian genealogical information online.
Researchers can explore the 197,529 pages of information through an index of districts and sub-districts. Ancestry.ca will also take the extra step of indexing 8.8 million names, addresses and other information for a searchable database, and developing advanced search tools to go along with it. Canadians will only be required to pay for the extra convenience of doing advanced searches from the comfort of their home. Ancestry.ca will assume the costs associated with this work and will offer a choice of free or paid access.

• Free access will be possible in person at Library and Archives Canada (LAC) and through hundreds of subscribing libraries across Canada. 
• Free access to raw census records will be available online. 
• Paid access will only be necessary if someone wants the extra convenience of doing advanced searches from home.

Individuals can make the most of their visit in Library and Archives Canada’s reading room in Ottawa by preparing in advance and consulting Preparing for a Visit or viewing the Orientation Services for Clients at 395 Wellington video or reading the blog post, The Top Five Things You Need to Know Before You Visit.

Canadians can access censuses taken before 1921 on Library and Archives Canada’s Census webpage.

UBC Library digitizes historic BC newspapers

According to this Canadiana.ca update, UBC Library has completed the digitization of 24 historic BC newspapers dating between 1865 and 1924. You can search these through the Canadiana Discovery Portal, a Google-like search engine that currently has its own failings, not the least of which is the ability to isolate a set of records such those valuable newspapers.

As the update states, "There are 8862 issues in total and over 45,000 pages. Here are the names of the newspapers:

Abbotsford Post
Alberni Advocate
Atlin Claim
Bella Coola Courier
Boundary Creek Times
British Columbia Record
Cariboo Sentinel (Barkerville)
Cumberland News
Daily Building Record (Vancouver)
Daily Ledger (Ladysmith)
Grand Forks Sun
Hedley Gazette
Hot Springs News (Ainsworth)
Kootenay Mail (Revelstoke)
Ledge (Greenwood)
Ledge (Nakusp, New Denver, Fernie)
Massett Leader
Miner (Nelson)
Mining Review (Sandon)
Moyie Leader
Nelson Economist
Phoenix Pioneer
Prospector (Fort Steele)
Tribune (Nelson)"

In the Canadiana Discovery Portal Search "Everything" option list, you can change the search option to Titles. There's a catalogue record for the newspaper itself and then individual records for each issue which will take you to UBC's British Columbia Historic Newspapers site. Congratulations UBC on making these invaluable resources freely available.

The Burgess Shale, a new Web site from the Royal Ontario Museum

The Royal Ontario Museum developed a Virtual Museum of Canada Web site around The Burgess Shale, a UNESCO World Hertiage Site, which is located entirely in BC in Yoho National Park. The ROM has done fieldwork at the Burgess Shale. None of the Burgess Shale fossils appear to be on display anywhere in BC, so it's great to have this opportunity for a virtual visit. The guy with the sledgehammer kind of worries me though.

Census of Canada, 1871 available at Library and Archives Canada

The Library and Archives Canada launched in late August 02011 a full, online version of the Census of Canada, 1871. Previously, the census for that year was only available for the province of Ontario. The full census is searchable by name and several other key access points and provides access to a PDF or JPG digitized image of the microfilmed census schedule for each individual in the database.

African Nova Scotian Diaspora: Selected Government Records of Black Settlement, 1791-1839

The Nova Scotia Archives is pleased to present a significant new online resource features unique documents reflecting the struggles and survival of African Nova Scotians, as the world marks the United Nations' International Year for People of African Descent. It contains over 500 digitized and fully searchable government documents relating to early African Nova Scotian immigration and emigration. Many of the documents are rich in the names and reflect the experiences of Black Refugees who came here at the close of the War of 1812.

You can visit the exhibit at: http://gov.ns.ca/nsarm/virtual/diaspora/


Source: ARCAN-L mailing list, 02011 09 23

USA President Obama's birth certificate posted on the White House site

Today, April 27, 02011, the White House posted President Obama's birth certificate on its Web site.

http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2011/04/27/president-obamas-long-form-birth-certificate

National Portal To Historic Collections from American Heritage and AASLH

Started in 2007, American Heritage and the American Association for State and Local History (AASLH) currently sponsor the National Portal To Historic Collections. According to the About page,

"... the National Portal is a massive, multiyear project to provide information on 4,000 historical sites, including easily searchable online access to digital images and descriptions of millions of artifacts housed in the collections of American museums, historical societies, National Parks, and other institutions across the country.
The objects being added to this national “clearinghouse” include documents, photographs, paintings and artifacts, and run the gamut from military artifacts to artworks to the tools and mementos of everyday life."

AuthentiCity, the City of Vancouver Archives Blog

While they've had a Twitter presence for a while now, I'm very pleased to learn that the City of Vancouver Archives recently launched a blog they call AuthentiCity. It's running on the popular WordPress platform.

SepiaTown, sharing historic photographs the Web 2.0 way

SepiaTown.com is a new Web site that allows individuals and institutions to share historic photographs the Web 2.0 way, via a Google Maps mashup. According to the site, "The objective of SepiaTown is to map a virtual past by collecting and mapping a vast collection of historical and vintage photographs, prints, film, audio and other media." SepiaTown, Inc. is based in Sunnyside, New York. PCMag.com named SepiaTown one of its Top 100 Web Sites of 2010 in the Undiscovered: Info category.

Footnote.com now part of Ancestry.com

Having grown its database of digitized historical documents over the past four years and based on a successful use-pay model that offered some parts of its database for free, Footnote.com announced on October 21, 02010 that it's been acquired by Ancestry.com as of that date. According to the announcement, "The plan is to continue to run Footnote.com the way we have always run Footnote.com — continuing to do what we believe is best for our customers, our business and our brand." I wonder though how long that will last under Ancestry.com's ownership. The announcement also provided these statistics: "Footnote.com started with only 5 million historical documents and today we have nearly 70 million searchable documents, over 1 million members, nearly 100,000 Footnote Pages, and over half million annotations added."Quite an accomplishment, but let's not forget that some of those records were provided through partnership arrangements with archives such as the National Archives and Records Administration in the United States, who therefore also deserve some credit. I hope that Ancestry.com will honor the agreements that were struck by Footnote.com with organizations such as NARA.

The Way We Were: Nova Scotia in Film, 1917-1957

The Nova Scotia Archives and Records Management has released a new digital collection called The Way We Were: Nova Scotia in Film, 1917-1957. An alternate URL is via its YouTube channel http://youtube.com/user/nsarchives/http://youtube.com/user/nsarchives/ According to an announcement on the ARCAN-L mailing list (02010 09 21), the collection consists of "96 'movies' that showcase the early years of amateur and professional filmmaking in Nova Scotia."

European Views of the Americas: 1493-1750 free database

According to a news announcement on the ITI Newslink and Weekly News Digest, EBSCO and the John Carter Brown library collaborated to produce a free database called European Views of the Americas: 1493-1750.

Site your Points of Interest at Sextant.org

A new wiki called Sextant.org devoted to telling stories about historical points of interest has emerged. Here's what its About page says:

Sextant.org is a website dedicated to allowing anyone to learn about the history of any place on earth. The site's content is written by its users and can also be edited by its users. Anyone is encouraged to add to any of the existing pages or create a new page about a location not yet covered by Sextant.org. Sextant.org's goal is to eventually be able to offer users information about almost every historically significant place one earth, explaining what happened there, when, why, who was involved, and what were the consequences. Access to such information about millions of locations all over the world will allow one to appreciate how, not only does the past surround him/her, but that it is intimately connected to the present.

Lost civilizations, fact vs fiction, in Cosmos Online magazine

The online version of Cosmos, a science magazine from Australia, features an article from its June 02010 Issue 33 titled "Lost" by Emma Young, a review of various lost civilizations and the myths that have evolved around them versus the ongoing scientific knowledge through reputable archaeological and other kinds of analysis.

Vancouver Opera world premiere of Lillian Alling opera

On October 16, 02010 the Vancouver Opera will be premiering a commissioned opera titled Lillian Alling by John Estacio (music) and John Murrell (libretto). The opera is based on the true story of the mysterious woman of that name who walked across North America in the 1920s and ended up in BC where she also spent time in Okalla Prison.