1 Friends of the NEWSLETTER British Columbia Archives Vol. 14, No. 5 Royal BC Museum to Launch Crowd-Sourcing Transcription Site, Transcribe This spring the Royal BC Museum will launch Transcribe, a crowd-sourcing website that will allow the public to transcribe valuable historical records. The project aims to improve the Royal BC Museum and Archives’ public accessibility by turning handwritten, audio, and video records into searchable data. By donating their time to transcribe letters, diaries, journals, and other materials Transcribe volunteers can help share BC’s history from the comfort of home. Crowd-sourcing is an increasingly popular way for archives and museums to improve the accessibility of their collections. The concept behind Transcribe is simple – the Royal BC Museum provides digital photographs of archival materials alongside a blank text area and users type exactly what they see. Volunteers simply visit the website, choose a collection and begin to transcribe, all on their own time. The finished transcriptions are reviewed and approved by Royal BC Museum staff and the data becomes searchable on the Transcribe site. The project was initiated by the New Archives and Digital Preservation department and Archivist Ann ten Cate. “We wanted to enlist the help of volunteers to make our collections more accessible,” said Ember Lundgren, Preservation Manager. “There’s a huge, untapped resource of talented and enthusiastic volunteers, just waiting to help out. Transcribe will help us use that resource. Plus, it’s fun!” 1 Lundgren notes that visitors are not obligated to transcribe work; they will also have the option to view the materials as an online exhibition, and browse existing transcriptions. The site currently features diaries, letters, and other materials from the First World War. As the project grows, new collections and media will be introduced. The first batch of images includes the letters of Victoria lawyer Arthur Douglas Crease, who described the war in letters to his family. In one particularly poignant letter, Crease writes: “it seems doubtful if I shall ever be able to write or talk about what we have been through on the Somme. You know I came out the only officer in our company out of six. The battalion is covered with glory and wounds”. With the help of Transcribe and its volunteers, letters such as Crease’s will become even more accessible to future generations of British Columbians. In late February, the Friends of the BC Archives helped test the new site, providing valuable feedback. If you didn’t get a chance to participate, don’t worry. The Royal BC Museum would love to hear from you. Please contact [email protected] to find out more, and to get a sneak peek at the website before its official launch during National Volunteer Week, April 12 – 18, 2015. - Meagan Sugrue, New Archives and Digital Preservation – Royal BC Museum Membership Renewal Membership in the Friends of the British Columbia Archives is open to everyone and covers the year from September to August. Please see the final page of this newsletter for a membership form. Correction In the December 2014 newsletter, the summary of Glennis Zilm’s talk incorrectly identified Nursing Sister Gladys Maude Mary Wake’s surname as 'Wales.' We apologize for this error. 2 3 Do Archives Give You Goose Bumps? – Peter Ord It was with great pride when I joined the Royal BC Museum last October and realised the BC Archives was under my portfolio of responsibilities. The BC Archives - the venerable repository of so much of British Columbia’s identity! In my first week I had the opportunity to peer into the Nellie McClung fond, listen intimately to the newly digitized Ida Halpern audio recordings, and get up close to Tanoo, the iconic painting by Emily Carr. Walking through the collection reminded me what important tasks lay ahead for our staff in order to bring the archive collection ‘out’ of the building for the public to explore and enjoy. Shouldn’t everybody have a chance to get the same goose bumps I was getting when it comes to learning about BC’s past in such an intimate way? In early February that opportunity was made (somewhat) real when the RBCM launched The Learning Portal, the museum’s new online education website that brings to life our archival and artifact collections. While the media presentation of its launch was held at a local school, the goal of the portal is to engage learners from all ages, and hopefully make the public more aware of the treasures available to them from their provincial museum and archives. More importantly, the Learning Portal provides a window from which the world can learn about BC, and celebrate the work our staff and volunteers (including members of the Friends of the BC Archives) have contributed. You can visit the Learning Portal here www.learning.royalbcmuseum.bc.ca What makes the portal even more special is the inclusion of stories related to our Archivists and their personal connections to the material being displayed. For example, the portal links to a CBC radio recording of Archivist Ann ten Cate facilitating an Archives Boot camp. Archivist Raymond Frogner is also featured, writing about his uncles' involvement in the First World War from both a personal and professional perspective. War stories will take centre stage again in the spring, when letters between soldiers and loved ones will be posted on the RBCM’s archives website. This will allow the public to not only read them, but to transcribe the material online so the people, places and events of this period in Canadian history become searchable by anyone around the world. So, while viewing this historic material from a computer screen might not give a person goose bumps, it does provide a wonderful glimpse into the treasures that are in the archives. Thank you to all the members of the Friends of BC Archives for helping to make this happen. - Peter Ord, Vice-President Archives, Collections & Knowledge – Royal BC Museum 3 Recent FBCA Events Victoria - A City Goes to War (January 18th, 2015) Jim Kempling, a retired army colonel and PhD candidate in History at the University of Victoria, gave an interesting and engaging talk on January 18th about Victoria during the First World War. Entitled “Victoria – A City Goes to War,” his presentation challenged popular myths and misconceptions about both the capital city and the conflict in Europe. He began by explaining the rationale for his micro-history research project. New interpretations of history can emerge, he said, when local events are scrutinized closely and placed within a larger context. He argued that Victoria was not caught unawares when the war began in August 1914. Victoria, he said, was already “a militarized society,” since the army and navy had a long-established presence in the region and since local militia units enjoyed social prestige. Due to a pre-war economic depression, there were many under-employed young men in the city – a situation that made Victoria “a target-rich recruiting environment.” Kempling illustrated his themes with a slide presentation using historical photographs (many of which are preserved in the BC Archives’ Visual Records collections) and local newspapers. He then demonstrated a website – A City Goes to War: Canadian Cities during the Great War 1914-1919 – that is being developed with associates and students at the UVic Library. The website is also being expanded to include other cities with contributions from municipal archives. He answered many questions from the audience and mentioned books on cities at war for further reading. At the close, the Friends of the BC Archives and guests expressed appreciation for an enjoyable and stimulating public lecture and best wishes for the ongoing success of his research project. A City Goes to War: www.acitygoestowar.ca - Patrick Dunae, Board Member – Friends of the BC Archives 4 5 Ship Building in Victoria & Vancouver during the First World War (February 15th, 2015) Chris Madsen, a professor at Simon Fraser University gave a well-attended meeting a most interesting and fact-filled talk on the ship building industry in Victoria and Vancouver during the First World War. It was noted that the shipbuilding business was vulnerable to the cycle of dependency (on government contracts) and disappointment (when governments, or their policies, or their finances, fluctuate). For the first two years of the conflict, the British Admiralty ruled ship procurement and rejected Canadian efforts to contribute. As the war progressed, the increasing effectiveness of German U-boats in the Atlantic brought a crisis in availability of merchant ships to bring food and war supplies to Britain. Persistent lobbying of the new Imperial Munitions Board by Canada was rewarded in 1917 by contracts to build wooden vessels at two yards in Victoria, and steel ones at six yards in Vancouver. As soon as the local industry had developed the infrastructure and workforce to perform this specialized work, funding dried up and priority was returned to British yards. Then came the Armistice and the loss of requirement for ships. The local industry never recovered, but one yard in Esquimalt, Yarrows, did manage to survive on maintenance and repair contracts. Chris’s talk was illustrated with images, facts, and figures many of which are found in the BC Archives. This talk was an overview of his article “Wages, Work, and Wartime Demands in British Columbia Shipbuilding 1916-19” which appeared in last summer’s issue of BC Studies dedicated to The Great War (No. 182, Summer 2014). - Michael Layland, Board Member – Friends of the BC Archives 5 What’s In a Name? – Ann ten Cate On November 22, 1858, over 400 residents of Yale, BC, signed a petition asking Governor James Douglas to provide an armed escort for “treasure” (gold) being shipped down the river.