Are you ready for another resource guide? This time I wanted to address the issue of online Canadian historical images. Many of us love to add images to lectures or presentations. However, you’ve likely learned by now that it is really hard to find Canadian historical images online. Google is fantastic, but even if you put the word “Canadian” next to an image search, you’re still going to end up mostly with American images. Unwritten Histories to the rescue!
The inspiration/origins of this blog post can be found on Kenneth R. Marks’ blog, The Ancestor Hunt. I was really excited to see that several weeks ago, he published several lists of online historical photograph repositories, organized by province. He kindly gave me permission to repost these lists here. However, Marks’ original list was geared more towards genealogists and history buffs rather than professional historians and/or educators. So instead, I’ve put together a short guide to how to use these images and where to find them, designed specifically for historians and/or educators. And by that I mean that I have limited this list to freely-available, online collections from institutions, museums, archives, universities, libraries, and historical societies. As with my previous guides, this is done mostly to ensure that the sources listed below are authentic and their provenance is clear. The links included here are also primarily of online image repositories, rather than online exhibits, since otherwise this list would never end. That is also why, with a couple of exceptions, I’ve listed the repositories and not each specific collection. And to be clear, by “images” here I am referring primarily to photographs, maps, and illustrations.
Here’s how the guide is organized. First, I discuss the issue of copyright with respect to historical images. Second, I discuss the issue of representation and the power dynamics involved in photographs, including the issue of metadata. Third, I have compiled a short list of my favourite online image sources, with information about each. And finally, I have put together an edited version of Marks’ list, organized by province.
I’ve tried to make this list as comprehensive as possible. However, I am sure that I missed something. If I did miss a collection that you think should be on the list, please let me know in the comments below! Let’s consider this a work-in-progress.
One final note: information on using photograph images in teaching and research is beyond the scope of this blog post, though it is in the pipeline! In the meantime, I highly recommend Samantha Cutrara’s work on this, particularly her online seminar for Canada’s History, “Using Primary Sources as a Form of Social Justice” and her fantastic (and free!) e-book, Doing Digital Humanities and Social Sciences in Your Classroom.
Without any further ado, on to the photos!
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