Celebrating Black History Month – every month

This month we’re highlighting collections that take a deep dive into the Black experience. For Black History Month on social media, we’ve showcased some significant resources in VITA Collections for understanding and exploring Black history in Ontario and beyond.

As always, we recommend reviewing and searching the Abolitionist Newspaper collections. Past blog posts have featured these papers in articles like Fugitive Voices: Black-run periodicals in Abolition-era Canada and news about the re-scanning of the Voice of the Fugitive newspaper in Announcing the Abolitionists Collection.

South Western Ontario was a major crossing point for fugitive slaves and freemen coming from the United States. To learn more about this aspect of Chatham Kent and area, check out the wonderful exhibit “Let us march on until Victory is won,” from Chatham Kent Museum https://vitacollections.ca/ckmuseums/620/exhibit.

Family history collections often end up at local archives and public libraries, one is the Richard Bell Family Fonds at Brock University includes 85 photographs, tintypes and documents spanning c.1850 to 1950. The extended family lived in London and St. Catharines and the collection includes birth, death and marriage certificates, images from family bibles, snapshots from family day trips, and more. https://images.ourontario.ca/Brock/2817492/gallery

Community collections often highlight significant citizens. We want to broadcast some of the stories we’ve found from our VITA client collections. For example: Bob Turner, previously a catcher for the Chicago White Sox, Turner became Colborne’s first Recreational Director https://vitacollections.ca/cramahelibrary/355/exhibit.

Halton Region boasts the remarkable Veteran Henry Thomas Shepherd, who fought in both World Wars and whose story is shared in a virtual exhibit created by Halton Hills Public Library https://vitacollections.ca/HaltonHillsImages/558/exhibit.

And read on about Dr. Saint-Firmin Monestime. Born in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Dr. Monestime moved from Haiti to open a practice in Timmins, but a chance encounter in a restaurant convinced him to put down roots in Mattawa instead, a Northern Ontario town where he would later became the first Black mayor in Canada: https://vitacollections.ca/multiculturalontario/476/exhibit/17.

Black History in Canada includes advocacy and civil action for human rights here and around the world. The Centre for Research on Latin America and the Caribbean (CERLAC) houses resources for researchers and scholars and features a fascinating Black Voices collection on their site https://vitacollections.ca/cerlacresourcecentre/search.

Researchers of all kinds use the collections to find history and illustrations for material of all kinds. Recently, a researcher contacted us with thanks for the transcripts of Schooner Days for background material about Caymanian Captain Culrose McLaughlin (1896-1992) and two-time Canada’s Cup winner Commodore Aemilius Jarvis (1860-1940) for her article Black Yachting History.

We’re privileged to be able to promote and share these collections online, resources that can help us celebrate Black History every month. If you have a story or collection you want highlighted, contact us at info@ourdigitalworld.org.

Banner image “Henry and Susanna Maude Shepherd Family” courtesy of Halton Hills Public Library.

OurDigitalWorld Newsletter December 2022

As 2022 draws to a close, our latest Quarterly newsletter offers some wonderful news and updates on important work:

  • Celebrating 10 years of OurDigitalWorld
  • 90 Years after the Holodomor
  • Projects
    • Enacting Reconciliation
    • Ensuring Accessibility
    • OurOntario.ca upcoming upgrades
  • Digital Collection Highlights
    • Making news in the Durham Region
    • Explore the Greater Chicago Area
  • Register now for OLA Super Conference 2023

Read more here

Ensuring Accessible Digital Collection Sites

This is a guest post by Olivia Najdovski, student at University of Toronto iSchool.

Desktop with green arrow on screen, surrounded by ear icon, eye icon, brain icon, and hand icon

One in five Canadians have a disability. As such, it is critical to consider the accessibility of websites to ensure that they are accessible to all. From October to December, I worked with OurDigitalWorld to conduct an accessibility audit of the VITA Digital Collections Toolkit base site code. The goal of this project was to achieve accessibility for sites as per the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0 (WCAG) guidelines. This process involved using WebAIM’s WAVE Browser Extension in addition to manual reviews to flag accessibility issues on the Toolkit sites, using both Safari and Chrome browsers. 

More specifically, the manual review involved combing through each individual webpage to pinpoint issues relating to keyboard accessibility and screen-reader compatibility. Some accessibility functionality is built in to the toolkit, like creating alt text for images from their titles, but this review process revealed some key discoveries that, with the web development talents of the ODW team, we were able to resolve. 

One issue we resolved across the Toolkit sites was a lack of labelling on buttons. When buttons or links are not accurately labelled, screen readers cannot pick up on what the purpose of that button or link is. Therefore, screen reader users cannot make use of the button, because the screen reader cannot relay what the button does. To remedy this, we ensured that buttons and links were accurately labelled across the toolkit sites, significantly improving the accessibility of the sites for screen reader users.

WAVE add-on testing a VITA Toolkit site
Sample application of the WAVE add-on during testing of a VITA Toolkit site

The great news is that incorporating small changes like labelling buttons and including additional informative alt text for images improved the accessibility and inclusivity of the Toolkit websites. Accessibility is an ongoing process, however, and can be compromised with any client-based content or site changes over time. This is a good step forward in keeping with ODW’s mandate of providing full and inclusive public access to community digital collections.

Some resources for WCAG review:

What’s new with VITA 6.4

VITA Digital Collections Toolkit was upgraded in September 2022, making it easier for user to provide better attribution and search results. This version upgrade means users can automatically assign copyright labels, process text items with OCR and hit highlighting, and share improved display for linked index records and more…

Exciting new changes include:

  • digital files uploaded as category “page” can automatically generate OCR and apply hit highlighting to search results – great for newspaper issues, documents, even headstone photos!
  • copyright holder statements can be automatically applied to serial publications 95 years old or younger (here’s how)
  • index records with links to digital pages will now display the linked page image in the details panel instead of the sidebar
  • personal information and cookies policy statements are now available for both VITA users and the public
  • apply “section” fields for non-newspaper pages e.g. Chapter headings
  • updated “help” for on-screen support (and correlating MAP updates)

Want to stay up to date with VITA Toolkit news? Use the subscription form on the home page of the VITA Help site.

What’s new with VITA 6.3

In April 2022, the VITA Digital Collections Toolkit was upgraded to version 6.3. This release includes a balance of public engagement features and back-end management options. Inspired by feedback from the user community on both sides of the collections, VITA 6.3 focuses on: increasing linked discovery (like indexing non-Newspaper volumes); better search options (like search within Publication and on/off filters for results sets); expanding and scoping VITA collection audiences (with OAI-PMH integrations and IP restricted sites, respectively); and some fun stuff like interactive jigsaw puzzles and enhanced pan-zoom viewing. We hope you will explore the collections to see some of the changes!

Improved & Engaging Public Site options

  • Contribute Audio/Video/Document files to eligible accounts
  • Search within a Publication (e.g. Home & Country Newsletters) allows your results to stay focused on a single volume or newspaper publication
  • Jigsaw puzzles for a different way to interact with historical images
  • Optional indexing for non-newspaper volumes like church or cemetery records
  • Results filters for instant scoping and backing up through results sets
  • Browser-activated audio/video player
  • IIIF viewer for pan-zoom-rotate view of all Full, Detail and Reverse images (e.g. this postcard)
Jigsaw Puzzles

New Audience Options: Integrations and Scoped sites

  • OAI-PMH feature for extending discovery in other spaces like the Digital Public Library of America (DPLA)
  • IP limited sites for collections with access restrictions (talk to us about this option)

For a full description of all VITA 6.3 upgrades for the public and VITA users, see our latest VITA Partner newsletter