Success Stories

Thompson / Okanagan: Past, Present and Future

Digitizing 3000 historic photographs

Behind every technological triumph lies a trial, sometimes of colossal proportions. And so it was for Jeff Van Dyk and his team of students, charged with creating a site entitled, Thompson/ Okanagan: Past, Present and Future which has a searchable database of historic photographs of British Columbia's south-central region.

"With four-fifths of the job done, the computer crashed and the data vanished," says Van Dyk, a 21-year-old student of computer information systems at B.C.'s Okanagan University College. "It was so close to being done," he recalls ruefully, "Or so we thought. It was really kind of a freak experience, and pretty depressing at the time."

Undaunted, however, the students soldiered on. In the end, they generated a magnificent web site that does justice to the grandeur of the region. "It was a valuable experience," Van Dyk says now, graciously setting aside the technological travails. "I feel I've learned a whole lot -- everything that I know about programming on the Internet, as a matter of fact."

The project was part of Industry Canada's Digital Collections program. The Digital Collections program, funded by the federal Youth Employment Strategy, has enabled over 1400 young Canadians (ages 15-30) to gain valuable work experience in the multimedia sector. By converting significant Canadian content for display on the Information Highway, Canadian youth have not only gained skills for knowledge-based employment but have provided greater access to Canadian holdings located in archives, libraries, museums, associations and other sources.

For this project, Van Dyk and five other students built a searchable database of photographs that capture the natural and human history of the Thompson-Okanagan area. The Thompson/ Okanagan: Past, Present and Future web site is a component of the larger Living Landscapes web site which is a collaborative effort of Okanagan University College and the Royal British Columbia Museum.

Dr. Duane Thomson, a history professor at the university and a driving force between Living Landscapes, says he was "totally pleased" with Van Dyk. "He was creative, he was capable, he did everything we asked. It was a perfect marriage for us."

Van Dyk designed the pages, developed the search engine, and oversaw the scanning, documentation and posting of nearly 3000 photographs. Each picture was catalogued according to Library of Congress protocols, including titles, descriptions, dates and any other available information.

The collection includes public archival material from the Kelowna Centennial Museum and photograph collections given by private patrons. Some photographs had never been seen before by the public. "This project has provided a wide audience in the public school system and, I'm certain, it will be used in curriculum development," Thomson says.

The experience left Van Dyk with a tremendous range of marketable multimedia skills such as photo digitization and web programming. "It was, until then, the biggest thing I had ever done of that sort," he says. "I'd done a search engine before, but nothing like this." He adds modestly, "It's not too difficult, once you have the concepts down."

There are many people anxious to take advantage of such expertise. Van Dyk has already had one job offer and many other invitations to participate on several projects. But the offers come prematurely since he is still completing his computer science degree.

Visit the SchoolNet Digital Collections World Wide Web Site at http://collections.ic.gc.ca