Information Technologies and Museums of the World: The Royal BC Museum provided open access to the digitized photos of Indigenous communities

The Royal BC Museum (Canada) has opened up to the public more than 16,103 historical photographs depicting Indigenous communities from across BC that were taken between the late 1800s and the 1970s.

The digitization process, launched in May 2018 and finished in April 2020, included scanning the back of each photo and a card with detailed descriptions of places, people, and objects in photographs. The information is often provided by the community and family members who know about images much more than anyone else.

To view these images, visitors can go to http://search-collections.royalbcmuseum.bc.ca/Ethnology, type "pn" into the Catalogue Number field and click search. They can also be searched by Culture or a specific community.