Tag Archives: digitization

In Praise of a Nondescript Government Facility (or, The Most Canadian Title Ever)

Alan MacEachern As I drove deeper into a suburb in the small town of Matane on Quebec’s Gaspé Peninsula, things got busier instead of quieter. More and more parked cars lined the streets. There were no sidewalks, so the many people walking were all in the street, all of them headed toward the same low-slung, nondescript office building in the… Read more »

Meaning Making in the Digital Age

      No Comments on Meaning Making in the Digital Age

Sean Kheraj This week, I’ve been invited to speak on a panel about digital technologies and open access in the university. I’ll be addressing these issues as they relate to my field of Canadian history. We have been provided with a series of questions to address. Here are two of the most significant questions that we will consider on this… Read more »

Unexpected Archival Finds: Shingwauk Student Register

      3 Comments on Unexpected Archival Finds: Shingwauk Student Register

Krista McCracken Recently staff at the Shingwauk Residential Schools Centre (SRSC) began a project to digitize a number of the stock registers, accounts books, and financial records associated with the Shingwauk Indian Residential School, which operated in Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario. The materials in this project ranged in date from 1883 to 1945, with the bulk of the records relating… Read more »

History Slam Episode 116: History’s Future

      1 Comment on History Slam Episode 116: History’s Future

https://activehistory.ca/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/History-Slam-116-John-Bonnett.mp3Podcast: Play in new window | DownloadBy Sean Graham For the past three days, historians from across the country have been gathered in Regina for the annual meeting of the Canadian Historical Association. In the past, we have done recap episodes following Congress to highlight some of the trends that are shaping the profession. In essence, Congress has served as… Read more »

Digital Outreach and Wikipedia in the GLAM Sector

by Krista McCracken Discussion around the value of contributing to Wikipedia and its use as a resource has been occurring since the establishment of the collaboratively written encyclopedia in 2001. You don’t have to look very far to find someone decrying the crowdsourced material as rubbish or others proclaiming it as the best thing since sliced bread.  In between these… Read more »

Digital Libraries and National Digitization Programmes: How Does Canada Compare?

By Krista McCracken National digital library projects and national digitization initiatives have emerged across the world in recent years with varying levels of funding, support, and success.  How does Canada’s national attempts at digitization and open access compare to international efforts to make material freely accessible online? The example closest to home is the Digital Public Library of America (DPLA)… Read more »

Canada’s Historical Newspaper Digitization Problem, Part 2

By Sean Kheraj Nearly three years ago, I wrote a post called “Canada’s Historical Newspaper Digitization Problem” in which I agreed with the findings of a Higher Education Academy study that found that Canada lagged behind the US, UK, Australia, and New Zealand in the digitization of historical newspapers. I found that Canada’s online historical newspaper archive is very limited,… Read more »

Archival Digitization and the Struggle to Create Useful Digital Reproductions

By Krista McCracken The past decade has fundamentally changed how archives provide access to historical records.  Many archives now provide digital access to collections, have digitization on demand services, and have started to prioritize collections for digitization.  Much of this digitization has been driven by funding bodies and a desire to increase accessibility to collections. But how has the digitization… Read more »

Memento Mori On the Web: What Happens When Photos are Digitized?

An exploration of how digitization changes the context of photography, with a particular emphasis on post-mortem photography.