Asian Library, University of British Columbia
Vancouver, BC CANADA
The Historical Chinese
Language Materials in
British Columbia
(www.hclmbc.org)
http://www.hclmbc.org
Background of the project
– uniqueness and volume of the materials
– inaccessibility of the materials
– need of a finding aid for the collections
scattered across the province
– under-researched
– urgency and timeliness of initiation in 2000
http://www.hclmbc.org
Methodology
– identify 27 resource centres & pioneer families in
British Columbia
– site visits and interviews of pioneer families and
curators / librarians
– evaluation of documents & artefacts
– documentation / scanning / digital imaging by David
Lam Centre, SFU technical support & UBC students
– batch upload at SFU / UBC
http://www.hclmbc.org
Scope of coverage
– manuscripts, newspapers, correspondence,
genealogical records
– business records, receipts, certificates, etc.
– association records
– readers, textbooks, creative writings
– artefacts with vernaculars
– photographs with Chinese captions
http://www.hclmbc.org
Structure of the Web page & major waves of
Chinese settlements in British Columbia
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database
image gallery
associations, religious bodies
Chinatowns
related materials
http://www.hclmbc.org
Challenges in documentation & maintenance
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language related
limitation of MySQL
collaboration
storage as a special collection in the library
workload
as a model for Japanese, Korean & S. Asian
projects
http://www.hclmbc.org
Challenges in transnational networking
• start at home
– with N. America & Europe
– with PRC, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Asia
http://www.hclmbc.org
New tools and collections
– publications of 150 clan and family
organizations in Guangdong, PRC
– 180 textbooks and readers used by the Yip Sang
family in the pre-WWII years (1920 -1945)
– Learning Objects on WebCT