This blog provides more information about the Okanagan Region Historical Digitization Project (ORHDP), a project created to enhance access to the history of British Columbia’s Southern Interior through the digitization of archival resources.
Over the following weeks, the ORHDP’s team members will be posting their own experience profiles, as well as writing posts describing each of the site visits we’ve done thus far. We will also be posting about some of the more technical aspects of the project, such as the equipment we are using and how we migrate content.
But first, some background on the project:
Funded by a donation from a private B.C.-based foundation and based out of the Okanagan campus of the University of British Columbia, the ORHDP was created to improve the accessibility of historical documents and photographs found in museums and archives in B.C.’s Southern Interior by scanning them and putting them online. To do this, a mobile digitization lab was formed, comprised of two laptops, two flatbed scanners, one book scanner, and four enthusiastic UBC students. For each site visit, the team packs up all of the equipment and typically spends three days on-site scanning as much as possible, taking these newly-created scans back to the UBC Okanagan campus for post-production (some light editing and description).
Since beginning the site visits in late May, the team has traveled to seven museums and archives around the region: Peachland Museum, Historic O’Keefe Ranch, Summerland Museum and Archives, Armstrong Spallumcheen Museum and Art Gallery, Keremeos Museum and Archives, Osoyoos and District Museum and Archives, and Naramata Heritage Museum. Four more site visits are planned for the months of September and October, and hopefully many more partnerships will develop as the project continues in the future.
For more information on our digitization process, be sure to check out the Digitization Demo page!
