Grants and Contributions

MOEB’s collection includes Compo recordings and documents from the 1920s to 1950s. Arcmtl has audio, graphical, and textual records that complement MOEB’s selections by representing later chapters in the story of Compo, from its sale to Decca records in the 1950s to its rebirth as MCA in the 1970s. The goal of the project is to digitize an encyclopedic selection of recordings by Compo and its family of record labels, including music, radio broadcasts and advertisements, and to archive and make accessible these documents of Canadian music and radio history to the public.

Grunt gallery will develop its online archival video collection with the goal of making this content accessible to the broadest possible audience. Our project involves digital transfer, editing, and sharing of 80-100 video tapes, and the transcription and English-language captioning of both new and previously digitized video.
Recorded from 1988-2009, the video collection contains over 500 tapes of performance, video art, and dialogues by diverse practitioners including Indigenous, visible and linguistic minorities, Queer, gender-diverse, intersectional, and other marginalized artists. Considering the critical questions about representation our sector grapples with currently, the project will take special focus on pre-2000 recordings embodying progressive exploration of early-wave identity politics in Canadian media and performance art.

The goal of the project is to digitize as many videocassettes as possible (Beta and VHS formats, for which copyrights and reproduction rights have been assigned to the Société historique de Saint-Boniface [SHSB]), in order to preserve them over the long-term for the future. Using these criteria, the SHSB archivist has already identified some 567 videocassettes to be digitized, for a total of roughly 918 hours of recordings. The goal for Phase 1 of this project is to digitize approximately one third (180) of the identified total. Since Beta and VHS formats have a limited lifespan, digitization is required before the physical deterioration of the cassettes is too far advanced.

Williams Lake First Nation (WLFN) is in the process of cataloging and digitizing Traditional Knowledge from Elders within the community. Interviews conducted with Elders gather both Traditional Knowledge and Secwepemc language so that the cultural heritage can be digitized, stored and transferred to future generations. One of the long-term priorities of WLFN is to expand the Little Chiefs Primary School, currently grades kindergarten-grade 4 to K-12 and use the Traditional Knowledge and language gathered from Elders to inform a language immersion curriculum, ultimately maintaining the Secwepemc culture and language for future generations of the WLFN community.

This project is part of a multi-year plan to define, and improve access to, all archival holdings and collections of cultural heritage and title and rights significance to Adams Lake Indian Band (ALIB). This year, the organization aims to improve access to their hardcopy documentary holdings and media through an inventory, finding aids and database creation. The majority of these materials are created and/or held by ALIB Title & Rights (T&R) department, though some are collected and secured for preservation from other band departments. Other ALIB departments are responsible for their own records management. The collection includes materials gathered to support ALIB T&R, such as community interview materials, photographs, maps, personal papers, employee notebooks etc.

Learning From Our Relatives is a 12-month project to document Indigenous cultural heritage which tell the story of Manitoba. Translating and transcribing historical audio video content, as well as creating new recordings of interviews with Indigenous knowledge keepers from around Manitoba, this project will contribute to greater understanding of Manitoba’s history and peoples for all.
This project will focus on digitizing hours of cultural heritage recordings in the collection, as well as identifying and filling gaps in the collection, documenting Indigenous knowledge keepers discussing and presenting their traditional knowledge skills such as food, craft, clothing, land-based learning or art in their original language. These videos will also be translated and transcribed into English and presented online in a virtual exhibit.

Tagging Inuit Knowledge seeks to facilitate Inuit knowledge sharing about a vast collection of digitized media owned by Pitquhirnikkut Ilihautiniq / Kitikmeot Heritage Society (PI/KHS) through its digital content portal called the Inuit Knowledge Bank. The Knowledge Bank is a custom developed content management and mobilization platform designed to facilitate Inuit access to, and engagement with, their digital heritage. This project will develop and implement digital tagging functionality that will allow Inuit users to contribute metadata to existing document records to assist with their identification, search-ability, prioritization, and licensing.

The Nikkei National Museum (NNM) and the Japanese Canadian Cultural Centre (JCCC) embark on a new joint project to preserve and make accessible records that recognize the activities and achievements of Japanese Canadian women. Women of Change: Celebrating Japanese Canadian Leaders brings to light the strength, resilience, and contributions made by business women, writers, photographers, women’s associations, academics, activists, and more, including Canada’s first female Asian Canadian judge, Dr. Maryka Omatsu. With a shared mandate to honour, preserve, and share Japanese Canadian history for a better Canada, the NNM and JCCC aim to preserve 2,184 photographs, 411 cm textual records, and 60 hours of moving images through digitization, description, and long term preservation; and make accessible these records online, in the classroom, and through exhibits.

The Illaiqpik Project will be directed by the Inuvialuit Game Council (IGC) and administered by the Inuvialuit Traditional and Local Knowledge Coordinator at the Joint Secretariat. IGC uses Inuvialuit traditional knowledge (in the form of oral histories, audio interviews, transcriptions, maps, and reports) for much of their decision making and currently there is little capacity to store and organize the existing information. The project’s aim is to collect and organize Inuvialuit owned traditional knowledge interviews and oral histories and build an in-house repository to provide access to the various Inuvialuit groups/co-management boards to use in decision making and to protect Inuvialuit cultural heritage while also providing opportunities for Inuvialuit-governed future research.

The archives department at the Univers culturel de Saint-Sulpice is currently digitizing a corpus of 40 manuscripts dating from the 17th to the 20th centuries. The department plans to publicize the unabridged content and promote its use by publishing it on the web portal. The documentary records have been weakened by intensive use over time. High-resolution digital files will be produced to ensure that the documentary records are preserved. These files will be retained, as will the originals, in reshelved in the vaults.