We’re thrilled to announce that Rare Books and Special Collections is now the home of the archives of Heavenly Monkey letterpress and binding studio. We have been long-time collectors of the output of Heavenly Monkey (search the library catalogue) and now you can use the archives to understand these beautiful publications from start to finish.

Heavenly Monkey is the imprint of publisher Rollin Milroy, and grew from his first press called A Lone Press in 1999.  Heavenly Monkey is dedicated to the use of techniques and materials traditional to the fine book arts- handmade paper, letterpress printing and fine bindings. Its catalogue is eclectic; according to Milroy, he prints things he think he would appreciate having on his own book shelf.  Heavenly Monkey has collaborated with an impressive group of authors, designers bookbinders and publishers, including Robert Reid, Jim Rimmer, Barbara Hodgson and Claudia Cohen.

The archives contain everything you would want to see to understand a Heavenly Monkey book from start to finish, from setting copies, layout schematics, dummies, impressions, printing blocks and plates and correspondence with collaborators. The collection was catalogued by one of our student archivists, who described the process as being “like Christmas-” every little package contained something new and wonderful to explore.

Printing block, Heavenly Monkey fonds box 18

El autobus azul mockups (nickel shown for scale). Heavenly Monkey fonds, box 18

Stay tuned- soon we will have available a copy of Heavenly Monkey’s most recent publication, The WunderCabinet, by Barbara Hodgson and Claudia Cohen. It is a truly remarkable collaboration.

To find out how Heavenly Monkey got its name, you’ll have to come to Rare Books and Special Collections to see the Heavenly Monkey’s 2002 Christmas card- box 2 file 3.

As part of our ongoing series of blog posts featuring place names in B.C. from the room names in the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre, today we will take a look at Granby River. Originally referred to as the North Fork of the Kettle River on early B.C. maps, the Granby River meets the Kettle Riverin Grand Forks B.C. and got its name from the Granby Smelting Company which operated on its banks. The owner of the Granby Smelting Company named the company after his hometown in Quebec (see B.C. Geographical Names). The company also expanded into other parts of the province and built a number of “company towns,” as shown by archival material in the Royal B.C. Museum and Archives, the Nanaimo Community Archives, and the Penticton Museum and Archives.

At Rare Books and Special Collections, we have a photo album showing various aspects of the operation of this company in Anyox, B.C., dating from sometime in 1910’s. The photographs show both external and internal views, showing the placement of the plant on the river, the machinery inside, and in some cases employees.

Granby Consolidated Mining, Smelting and Power Company photo

Granby Consolidated Mining, Smelting and Power Company photo

Granby Consolidated Mining, Smelting and Power Company photo

Note that these photographs are not from Granby River, but rather from the company town of Anyox. The Granby company was so influential that the body of water that this plant was on was also named Granby Bay. This photo album is part of our B.C. Historical Photograph Album Collection.  Although the finding aid for this collection is in an older format, the collection is rich with historical views from all of British Columbia.

In the Barber Centre, the Granby River room is a group study room on the 4th floor, facing East Mall. These study rooms are bright and airy, and very popular for group work. They can be booked online.

Group study room in Barber Centre. Photo courtesy of UBC Library (http://www.flickr.com/photos/ubclibrary).

In January we were visited twice by students in ARST 550: Management of audio-visual and non-textual archives from the School of Library, Archival and Information Studies. This class focuses on the management of a variety of types of material, but they came to Rare Books and Special Collections particularly to work with photographic archives.

RBSC collects photographs in a variety of manners: they are often included in fonds or collections with other types of material, or we occasionally acquire them as single items.  As for any type of material, the focus of our photographic archives is mainly British Columbia, but it also spills over into neighbouring provinces or states when the photographs are in the context of a mainly-B.C. collection. We collect photographs in all mediums, from lantern slides to negatives to prints.

The task at hand for the students in ARST550 was to appraise and in some cases accession photographs from our backlog. In all cases, we had very little provenance information or contextualizing data for the students to work with. In short, the photographs were a mystery. They did an excellent job of inspecting the photographs for their physical condition and content, and made recommendations about whether they should be added to our photograph collections.

A couple of interesting discoveries:

• We located a complete set of negatives from the prints in the B.W.W. MacDougall fonds. Furthermore, we located metadata in the form of index cards which is a match for the negatives. Check out the cool vintage negative envelopes and canisters:

B.W.W. McDougall negatives

B.W.W. McDougall negatives

• We found a really charming photograph album originating from a family called the Kidds.  They appear to have been involved with the UBC Players club, and there are also photographs depicting Crescent Beach, mountaineering, and businesses such as Overwaitea Food. The album dates from 1924 to 1926. The photos shown below show a Players Club trip to Britannia Beach.

Kidd family album

Our thanks to the students for their excellent work, and to Prof. Jessica Bushey for coordinating the visits!

For more information on searching our photograph collections, please consult our Historical Photographs research guide.

In this week’s installment of Rare Books and Special Collection‘s blog series on B.C. place names from the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre, we’ll take a close look at the Fraser River.

The Fraser River is, not surprisingly, named after the explorer Simon Fraser who fully explored the river in 1808. The longest river in British Columbia (over 2,200 km), it originates in the Rocky Mountains and flows into the Straight of Georgia.

The Frazer River Thermometer

Gold was struck in Fraser River around 1858 which is the origin of our featured document. This broadside entitled The Frazer River Thermometer was published in San Fransisco in 1858 and has humorous  illustrations of miners leaving their lives and families in California to seek gold in British Columbia, describing the area as the “new El Dorado of the North.”  Note the older spelling of “Fraser” with a “z” instead of an “s.” Very few copies of this document are known to exist, but we have one copy on display in the Chung Collection exhibition room, and another which is available upon request in our reading room for closer consultation. Early B.C. history is one of the main focuses of the Chung Collection, along with immigration and settlement, and the Canadian Pacific Railway Company. The exhibition displays highlights from the collection, but the collection is much larger, numbering approximately 25,000 items.

In the Barber Centre, the Fraser River room is part of the facilities of the Centre for Teaching and Learning Technology, on the 2nd floor.

Happy new year, and welcome back to Rare Books and Special Collections’ series of blog posts featuring places in British Columbia based on the room names in the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre.

Our featured place for this post is Lillooet, which was founded as “Mile 0” on the Cariboo/Barkerville gold rush wagon trail.  Located 340 km northeast of Vancouver, Lillooet is included in the traditional land of the St’at’imc first nation. After the Gold Rush period, the main industries in Lillooet were centered around the railway, ranching, farming and forestry.

Our featured documents are three photographic postcards from the B.C. Historical Photograph collection at RBSC. This collection can be searched through the Archives, Bibliographies and Reading Rooms section of the library catalogue, or on the RBSC site.

Kelly's Lake, P.G.E. above Lillooet, Cariboo Trail ID # BC-366

All three photographs were taken by the photographer Arthur Phair, and depict scenery around Lillooet, views from the Pacific Great Eastern Railway… and Lillooet’s first truck!

Looking east, Lillooet, B.C., winter, 1916-17, ID # BC-522

Lillooet's first truck, ID # BC-1802

According to Camera Workers of British Columbia, Arthur Phair was a commercial photographer active in Lillooet from around 1920-1933. Camera Workers of British Columbia is a great (and free!) resource for identifying photographers in B.C. from 1858-1950.

In the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre, the Lillooet room (#301) is part of the Chapman Learning Commons. This beautiful room is a favorite for conferences and meetings.

Photo courtesy of US Mission Canada and used under Creative Commons license

Interesting Lillooet fact: Lillooet’s Bridge of 23 Camels, opened in 1981 and named by contest, is named after 23 camels brought to B.C. during the gold rush period to use as pack animals. Sadly, the camels’ soft feet were not suited to the rough wagon trails, and they were reportedly stinky and difficult to manage. Most were subsequently abandoned to roam the B.C. wilds before succumbing to cold winters or hunters.

A small collection of drawings and paintings from turn of the century Vancouver has been recently catalogued at Rare Books and Special Collections. The Albert Lindgren fonds contains 37 small watercolour paintings and 9 drawings, dating from ca. 1900-1903.  The paintings and drawings mostly depict Vancouver-area waterfront views, as Lindgren was a ship captain.

Archives will often collect works of art which document a specific place, culture or time period.  In the era before photography became so commonplace, a sketch or painting may be one of few records of what a place or landmark looked like. For example, the image below is an early depiction of the original Prospect Point Lighthouse in Stanley Park, before the seawall was built.

View of Prospect Point lighthouse, ca. 1900

On the other hand, sometimes a lack of contextual information or notes by the creator leave you wondering what it is exactly you’re looking at. For example, the image below: given the content of the rest of the collection, this is very likely a waterfront scene in the Vancouver area. Possibly it’s Coal Harbour- if you think you know, leave a comment or email us at spcoll@interchange.ubc.ca and let us know!

View of waterfront buildings, possibly Coal Harbour, ca. 1900

For a large Canadian documentary art collection, much of which can be viewed online, check out Documentary Art at Library and Archives Canada.

The end of the year for an archivist can feel like… well, like Christmas! At the end of the year a lot of people get around to adding to their archives. As a little preview, next year you can expect to see additions to:

• The Douglas Coupland fonds
• The Ann Blades fonds
• The Chung Collection
• The John Keenlyside Legal Research Collection

Happy holidays and stay tuned in the New Year for new and growing collections!

Incoming archives at Rare Books and Special Collections

A post to the Society of American Archivists listserv mentioned this piece of software: ILINX Capture Mobile “allows you to capture an image of anything, attach keywords to it, so you and easily find it later, and then emails a PDF of the image back to you.”  Seems like a tool with  potential for those who wish to take pictures of rare or archival material in Rare Books and Special Collections or University Archives and keep track of citations, box locations, etc.  While using a cell phone or digital camera to capture images of material in our reading room is allowed in RBSC and UA (within the constraints of copyright law and fair dealing) we always caution researchers to take careful note of what they are photographing so that they can cite it properly later.

Do you have an app, a tool or other method of keeping track of what you’ve seen in the reading room? Tell us about it in the comments and share with others!

Every two weeks, Rare Books and Special Collections is featuring a historic document based on a B.C. place name used in the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre.  Our third featured B.C. place is the Nimpkish area.  The community of Nimpkish is on the end of Nimpkish Lake, on the northern part of Vancouver Island.  An area known for forestry (as part of the North island Central Coast Forest District), it is also the home of the Nimpkish Lake Provincial Park, and the traditional territory of the ‘Namgis First Nation.

The document shown comes from the Yorkshire Trust Company fonds, and the files from this collection show the establishment of the Nimpkish Lake Logging Company in the early 20^th century.  The files contain minutes and correspondence regarding shares and timber leases.

From the Yorkshire Trust Company fonds, file 2-28

The Yorkshire Trust Company was based in England, but established an office in Vancouver in 1880. Being one of the first financial companies to operate in British Columbia, its records include valuable historical information on a variety of early British Columbia businesses.  These records are available for consultation in the Rare Books and Special Collections division of the library.

In the Barber Centre, the Nimpkish Study Area is room 387, and is part of the Science One and Arts One area on the third floor.

Entry to Science One and Arts One

In a new series of blog posts, Rare Books and Special Collections will be featuring a historic document, photograph or map related to one of the B.C. towns represented in the room names of the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre.

Receipt from A.C. Christensen & Son, Bella Coola

To kick things off, we’ll start with Bella Coola which is a small town on the Central Coast of B.C.  The Bella Coola area is famous for the MacKenzie Rock, where in 1793 Alexander MacKenzie wrote his name on a rock to commemorate completing the first recorded journey across North America.  In the early to mid 20^th century, the Bella Coola area was home to the Tallheo Cannery, which is where our featured document comes from.  The Tallheo Cannery was built in 1912 by the Canadian Fishing Company.  The archives of the Tallheo Cannery include administrative records such as correspondence, financial documents, and fishermen’s statements.  The document shown is a receipt for purchases made by the Cannery from a Bella Coola store, A.C. Christensen & Son, who were dealers in “dry goods, boots and shoes, hardware and groceries.”

In the Barber Centre, the Bella Coola room is number 193, a meeting room on the first floor of the building.

Check back every two weeks for another B.C. town and another historic document!

Bella Coola room, Barber Centre