Twenty-one projects from around the province have been named as successful recipients of the 2011 B.C. History Digitization Program (BCHDP) funding awards.

The digitization program, an initiative of the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre, was launched in 2006. It provides matching funds that help libraries, archives, museums and other organizations digitize unique historical items, including images, print and sound materials.

Learning Centre funding totalled nearly $180,000 for the 2011 round. Altogether, BCHDP funding has totalled more than $820,000 for 98 projects throughout British Columbia.

This year’s wide range of projects includes the digitization of First Nations materials, historic photographs and oral histories of BC communities, pressed plants specimens and entomological collections, items chronicling Vancouver’s punk rock scene, material highlighting the feminist movement in the West Kootenays, archival maps and newspapers, and more.

Congratulations to this year’s recipients! You can view a complete list of grant recipients and project descriptions here.

Eugene Barsky, a Science and Engineering Librarian at UBC Library, has won an award from the American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE, Engineering Libraries Division) for his work involving the digitization and promotion of decades of information on mine reclamation.

Barsky was given the Innovation in Access to Engineering Information award for the project, a collaboration between UBC Library and the British Columbia Technical and Research Committee on Reclamation. The effort resulted in free, open access to more than 30 years of symposium proceedings that are hosted on cIRcle, UBC’s information repository, at https://circle.ubc.ca/handle/2429/6934.

An article on the project appeared last year in the Northern Miner. You can view the article here.

Certificates will be awarded in June at the American Society for Engineering Education Conference and Exposition.

Congratulations Eugene!