Collaborative Effort Revives The British Colonist

From Arcan-L, posted on December 12, 2008, by Lara J. Wilson of the University of Victoria Libraries (British Columbia, Canada), a press release announcing the launch of The British Colonist, a new digitized resource:

Old News Pages Offer New Insights

UVic and the Times Colonist make it easier to search BC’s past online

There are no more trips to the library, squinting at years of microfiche, for those who are interested in BC’s history. Thanks to a partnership between the University of Victoria and the Victoria Times Colonist, the world can now search through historic editions of the newspaper online.

The website, www.britishcolonist.ca, is officially launched today. It contains issues of the British Colonist, which is one of the oldest daily newspapers in Western Canada, and one of the best records of colonial BC. Every page of every issue between the first one, on December 11, 1858, and the end of June 1910 is now online—a total of 100,544 pages.

Wilson explains that this resource "will be a boon to many researchers (genealogists, students, educators, historians) seeking information and insight into this period of European settlement and establishment of the province."

With over 100 000 pages to search, I certainly agree.

However, nothing of this magnitude is done successfully without partnerships: Several institutions collaborated to make this resource a reality, including the UVic Libraries & Special Collections, the Victoria Times-Colonist, and the Irving K. Barber Centre of the University of British Columbia.