Presentation on the challenges of historical newspaper digitization & research, tonight!

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Tonight at 7pm Walter Lewis will be presenting to the Uxbridge Genealogy Group at the Uxbridge Public Library.

Walter’s interests lie in both the intricacies of digitizing old print & microforms, and in navigating historical newspapers’ own idiosyncrasies. The presentation will cover the accuracy and biases of local journalists, the many interesting ways to find birth, marriage, and death information, things all researchers should know about microfilm and OCR, tips & tricks to navigate conflicting stories, and the ways local coverage changed over time (and slowly got replaced with syndicated stories).

If you’re in the area, stop by the Uxbridge Public Library and enjoy the talk!

 

Mystery Month: The Bell and Sloman Families

A few years, Rick Bell donated to Brock University a trove of photographs found in his mother’s house in St Catharines. While many of the later photos are of his family members, there are a number of late 19th century studio portraits depicting unidentified people. We wrote about these mysteries in our virtual exhibit about black history in Ontario:

 

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Continue reading Mystery Month: The Bell and Sloman Families

OurDigitalWorld’s 2018 Year In Review

odwbutton-largefontWe’re so excited to present to you our very first Year In Review!

Every year our team and our members accomplish wonderful things, and we want to celebrate our work and theirs. Please take a moment to look back on 2018 with us and read about what we’ve done – and what we’re working on for 2019. Continue reading OurDigitalWorld’s 2018 Year In Review

We’re Speaking at the Archives Association of Ontario Annual Conference

AAO Logo - no backgroundIn Belleville, from May 8 to May 10th, the AAO will be holding their Annual Conference. We’re on the program speaking about our efforts to work with archives, libraries, and newspaper publishers to ensure the ongoing stewardship of Ontario’s local news. Our session is on Friday at 10:45am: Continue reading We’re Speaking at the Archives Association of Ontario Annual Conference

Upcoming funding opportunities for heritage

JHM002343196The Canada Post Community Foundation has funding available for nonprofit and community organizations to support children and youth. Many libraries, schools, and cultural groups can benefit from this funding – grants can be up to $25,000, but lower amounts have varying application requirements. There are also up to 3 grants available for up to $50,000. Continue reading Upcoming funding opportunities for heritage

Resources and recommendations for teaching multicultural history in Ontario

Part of our Multicultural Community Capacity project has been learning the landscape of multicultural history for Ontario schools. We know there are fantastic curriculum resources out there, and we don’t want to be redundant to what others have already worked tirelessly on. Here we’d like to share a few things we’ve found, and some recommended resources from teachers using them in their classes.

Continue reading Resources and recommendations for teaching multicultural history in Ontario

Read our report on digitization in Ontario public libraries

OurDigitalWorld-DigitizationReport-2019Jan-Web.pngWe’re delighted to announce the publication of our report on digitization in Ontario public libraries! The report is now available for download.

We asked eighty questions over the summer of 2018, and our obliging survey respondents gave us some great answers about how they’re tackling community history, heritage collections, and the demands of the digital age. Thank you to every public library in Ontario that responded!

Now you can read all the results before you join us at our OLA SuperConference presentation next week.

Continue reading Read our report on digitization in Ontario public libraries