British Columbia Archives
The British Columbia Archives are the central archive of the Canadian province of British Columbia . They are located in the provincial capital Victoria at 655 Belleville Street.
History of the archive
The path taken by the BC Archives is quite tortuous and is still recognizable in the name today, because it should translate as “British Columbia Archives”, as several institutions have been absorbed into it.
Like most archives in Canada, efforts to archive written sources go back to the producing institutions themselves. In the BC Archives , so-called historical records have been systematically collected by the Legislative Library , i.e. the library of the Legislative Assembly since 1894. Only in 1908 was a separate institution founded for this purpose under the direction of the provincial archivist RE Gosnell, which, however, still remained in the building of the Legislative Library . His successor from 1910 to 1919 was Ethelbert Olaf Stuart Scholefield, who had headed the library as Provincial Librarian since 1900 , where he had already followed Gosnell. An initial inventory was drawn up and efforts that have been ongoing to this day began to centrally store the scattered stocks from other locations.
In 1915 the archive moved to the Connaught Library in the Parliament Building, but was still not open to the public. However, Scholefield died at the end of 1919 at the age of 44. Under John Forsyth (1920–26), John Hosie (1926–34) and Dr. W. Kaye Lamb (1934-40) - in 1948 he became Dominion Archivist (later called National Archivist ), an office he held until 1968 - as well as Williard Ireland (1940-74) the efforts of their predecessors continued and their own internal structures created. Ireland also became a Provincial Librarian in 1946 .
It was not until 1970, four years before the end of Ireland's term in office, that the archive moved out of the Connaught Library and moved to its present location in the Heritage Court , in the immediate vicinity of the Royal British Columbia Museum . In 1974 the offices of provincial archivist and librarian were finally separated from each other. The archivist became the former archivist of the Saskatchewan Province Allan R. Turner (1974–1979). He was followed in 1979 by John A. Bovey (until 1998), the former archivist of Manitoba and the Northwest Territories .
Now expansions began, such as in 1977 the Emily Carr Gallery on Wharf Street, where exhibits from the painting collection were repeatedly presented, but it was closed in 1991. In 1980 the Aural History Program was expanded and renamed the Sound and Moving Image Division , a department primarily responsible for photos and films, as well as for archiving interviews.
In 1987 and 1988, respectively, Records Management and the Provincial Archives were merged to form the British Columbia Archives and Records Service (BCARS), and the Information and Privacy Department was added in 1996 . Information services, the analysis department and the traditional archive became one large organization. This was headed by Gary A. Mitchell from 1998, whereby the Archives and Information Access Branch received its current name, British Columbia Archives , in the same year .
Logically, in 2000, this institute was also given the responsibility for employees and management, which had previously been with the Information and Data Management Branch and which had mainly administered government files. This branch that was taken over did not simply disappear, but was continued as the Corporate Privacy and Information Access Branch within the institute. This means that data protection and administration of the Freedom of Information legislation - the special possibilities and limits of information retrieval and publication in Canada - are in one hand. This created the prerequisites for efficient and legally secure access to the holdings.
The focus here is on written sources, genealogical sources are particularly in demand, but non-written sources are also tagged in some cases . The Faculty of Fine Arts of the University of Victoria developed a system for finding the archive in the form of descriptions of historical photographs, paintings, drawings and prints. In January 1995 the development of online systems for accessing the stocks began.
Own indices like the Vital Event Indexes and the Time Machine have high didactic priority and deal with controversial topics in the province.
On April 1, 2003, with the new Museum Act, the archives, Helmcken House , the Netherlands Carillon (a bell tower), Thunderbird Park , St Ann's Schoolhouse and the museum were combined to form the Royal BC Museum Corporation .
Stocks
The enormous holdings are subdivided into the following groups according to their references and their origin (provenance principle): Genealogy / important events ( vital events ), image and text holdings, sound archives, moving images, maps and time machine , as well as the library.
archive
Since all North American archives are used particularly intensively by genealogists, most of them have organizationally adjusted to this. The relevant stocks are prepared for the lay user group, which is particularly represented here, and the employees are trained accordingly. In addition, there are opening times that are adapted to the general working hours, ie the archive is mainly open late in the afternoon and in the evening. The Crockford's Clerical Dictionary (Anglican) , which lists Anglican clerics, numerous lists of members of the military and the navy, electoral rolls, and above all the records of the censuses of 1871 (Victoria only), 1881, 1891 and 1901, deserves special mention among the collections that are important for family researchers all available on microfilm and also made accessible on the Internet. Government holdings such as marriage, birth and death registers, records of the allocation of crown lands, and older holdings of the individual government bodies are also accessible.
Private documents include church registers, family files, but above all newspapers, photographs, films, sound recordings as well as paintings, maps and the like. Some of them are also accessible via the Internet.
At the end of 2007, over 130,000 of the visual sources were described and thus found using a search term. Above all, the holdings of the photographers Frederick Dally (e.g. a photo of Edgar Dewdney from 1865, a total of 273 photos), Francis George Claudet (96), Hannah Hatherly and Richard Maynard (e.g. numerous photos from the gold rush on the fiber and the Stikine River), Edward Dossetter (e.g. around 1870 Indians on the Queen Charlotte Islands , in 1881 four Haida men, one village), J. Howard A. Chapman (e.g. 1924 a photo of the Prime Minister of BC John Oliver ), Savannah and Ernest William Albert Crocker. The Bordertown Collection is of particular importance for railway history, and the FV Longstaff Collection for social and military history . In addition, there are the collections of various state institutions, such as the government information service , the Forest Service or the Department of Education.
Around 10,000 films document primarily the period between 1935 and 1985, but the holdings go back to 1899. As with the photographs, public authorities such as the Ministry of Agriculture, Environment, Forestry and Fisheries, but also the authorities responsible for roads and transport, for recreation and conservation and for tourism and travel, not least the museums, have considerable here Contributions delivered. Then there are again private stocks, such as those of electricity suppliers such as BC Hydro , or the railway companies. Last but not least, the films produced by timber companies and the like for image maintenance and documentation make important contributions, but especially the mass media and film productions.
Sound recordings, especially interviews, are indispensable sources for exploring more “subjective” areas. The largest collection here is the Orchard Collection , which includes around 950 interviews, and was donated by Orchard and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation between 1975 and 1985 and created in the 1960s. Then there is the Behind the Kitchen Door Project , which focuses on housework, the collection of the West Coast Medical History Society Collection , the Jewish Historical Society, the Coal Tyee Society Collection. For ethnic groups, the Reynoldston Research and Studies Collection by Meaning. 1972–83 the department called Sound Heritage produced numerous records, but the Anthropology Audio-Visual Collection is the most important.
After all, the archive holds an extensive music collection. The music of the First Nations was mainly collected by Ida Halpern and Mildred Valley Thornton, as well as the Phil Thomas Collection on British Columbia's folk music. In mid-2006 only 20% of the music stocks were tagged, but that means that 2,580 of the 13,000 recordings can be found.
The archive's card holdings comprise around 63,000 items. These include the British Admiralty Charts , 1848-1955 , BC Government Lithographed Regional Map Series, 1911-1991, or a map of Victoria from 1861.
Finally, there is the Time Machine , which promises a didactically well-prepared “journey through time”.
Library
The library has around 70,000 media, including books, magazines, newspapers, etc. Its focus is on families, communities, women, First Nations art, British Columbia art, Cariboo gold rush , multiculturalism , business and technology, natural resources.
literature
- Colin Browne: Motion Picture Production in British Columbia, 1898-1940. A Brief Historical Background and Catalog (British Columbia Provincial Museum Heritage; Vol. 6). British Columbia Provincial Museum, Victoria BC 1979, ISBN 0-7718-8136-3 .
- Dennis J. Duffy: Camera West. British Columbia on Film, 1941-1965 . Provincial Archives of British Columbia, Victoria BC 1986, ISBN 0-7718-8479-6 .
- Derek Reimer, David Mattison, Allen Specht (Eds.): Voices. A Guide to Oral History . Provincial Archives of British Columbia, Victoria BC 1984, ISBN 0-7718-8396-X .
- Ethelbert O. Scholefield: British Columbia from the Earliest Times to the Present . Clarke Publ., Vancouver SJ 1914.
See also
Web links
- Side of the British Columbia Archives on the website of the Royal BC Museum (English)
Remarks
- ↑ For the current opening times, see: Hours of Operation ( Memento of the original from May 4, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. .
- ↑ The website is maintained by the University of Victoria: Census .
- ↑ The best way to access it is via Overview ( Memento of the original from April 23, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. .
- ↑ Coal Tyee refers to coal and the chief, known as Tyee , who made the Hudson's Bay Company aware of an important coal deposit.
- ↑ Entrance to the Time Machine: Amazing Time Machine ( memento of the original from April 18, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. .
- ↑ The search mask for the library holdings can be found here: Basic Search ( page no longer available , search in web archives ) Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. .
