Please join us in welcoming the University of British Columbia Library Digitization Centre as our latest member of The Commons.

The University of British Columbia Library’s Digitization Centre develops and preserves digital collections of photographs, rare books, maps, letters, newspapers, and other items. The majority of these items are drawn from collections held at UBC, but the center also digitizes and makes available materials held at and in partnership with other institutions and community groups. Collectively they document a diverse range of people and places, activities and events, and serve as a resource for students, historians, genealogists, and other researchers. Today, they start making available parts of their collection to an even larger audience by publishing their items on Flickr.

Explore the content that has already been uploaded to the UBC Library Digitization Centre’s photostream and sorted into several albums, including pages from the first digitized copy of the Spanish Chant Manuscript, an exquisite collection of Gregorian chants, hymns and psalms. Part of the Haweis Family fonds, a collection of sixty glass plate negatives created by Rosetti Photographic Studios documenting Vancouver’s Stanley Park in 1912. The Wallace B. Chung and Madeline H. Chung Collection, an outstanding collection of historical items related to British Columbia History, Immigration and Settlement, and the Canadian Pacific Railway Company. The Capilano Timber Company Collection with images depicting the operations of the Capilano Timber Company, including loggers, logging camps, and views of the Capilano Valley and the Capilano Suspension Bridge in North Vancouver. As well as the Peter Anderson fonds, documenting the life and experiences of Peter Anderson, a Swedish born immigrant who came to the United States in 1885, worked as a logger in Wisconsin, and later owned a sawmill in Washington. He then moved to British Columbia and started a new logging company at Knox Bay.

We hope you enjoy the photos, and invite you to contribute your knowledge through comments and tags making it accessible to millions of people around the world.