From the vault: a bizarre photo of three people holding what looks like a stingray.
We know nothing about the photograph except that it was taken by Gilbert Kempton. We also think it needs a hilarious caption! Help us out by posting your suggestions here, or on our Facebook page.
Great news for classical music lovers! Alexander Street Press has just added 1,409 new albums (over 35,000 tracks) to its Classical Music Library, an online database of streaming audio. The new release contains content from EMI Classics, Angel Records, Capitol Catalog, and more. Check out the list of new tracks – there’s something for everyone.
The Classical Music Library also has free biweekly downloads. You can sign up for alerts when new tracks are made available and follow news and announcements on Alexander Street Press’ music blog. Happy listening!
The EAC recently donate its archival records to Dalhousie
The University Archives and Special Collections has had a busy year! Newly catalogued items enter the Special Collections on a routine basis and our music room is as busy as every. We’ve also been busy acquiring and processing some exciting archival material. Not all of the material is ready for research – it takes some time to create finding aidsto our collections – but we want to spread the word about a few acquisitions to give you a sense of what we’ve been collecting:
This is just a selection – we’ve acquired over 100 metres of archival records this year alone! We’re always working to process and make available new acquisitions and our extensive collection of unprocessed archives – business, shipping, personal, and university records. If you’re interested in learning more about a collection, don’t hesitate to contact us!
The Archives and Special Collections is excited to share news of an upcoming talk at the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic.
Portrait of Archibald MacMechan from the Archibald MacMechan fonds (MS-2-82)
On December 13 at 7:30 p.m., Elizabeth Peirce will give a talk titled Shaped by the Sea: The Life and Times of Archibald MacMechan. Peirce is the editor of In the Great Days of Sail, a new collection of reprinted MacMechan stories. She will speak about MacMechan’s life, times, and contribution to Nova Scotia’s cultural history.
We’re excited about the talk because Archibald MacMechan’s papers are right here at Dalhousie (we just blogged about his report on the Halifax Explosion). MacMechan’s papers are one of our most interesting collections. It contains manuscripts of his published and unpublished works, photographs, correspondence, and other materials documenting his life and career as an educator, historian, and author. MacMechan is a key figure in Nova Scotia’s cultural history. From the Maritime Museum’s website:
Archibald MacMechan (1862-1933) was a well-known Nova Scotian writer, academic, and chronicler of his adopted province’s seafaring past. He taught in the English department of Dalhousie university for many years and counted among his students Lucy Maud Montgomery and Hugh MacLennan. Though well-respected as a scholar–he was among the first to teach a course in Canadian literature and to publish a critical survey of that literature, Headwaters of Canadian Literature, in 1924– MacMechan’s best-remembered work was contained in three collections of stories from Nova Scotia’s golden age of sail: Sagas of the Sea (1923), Old Province Tales (1924), and There Go the Ships (1928). These collections reveal MacMechan’s careful documenting of life at sea in the nineteenth century through many years of correspondence and visits with those who experienced it firsthand; many of his accounts of sea calamities and sheer human endurance through mutinies, storms, fires, and shipwrecks read more like thrilling fiction than bare fact.
Like Helen Creighton after him, Archibald MacMechan acted with incredible foresight to salvage an important part of Nova Scotia’s past from oblivion.
All talks at the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic take place in the Small Crafts Gallery at 7:30 p.m. We hope you drop in to learn about MacMechan’s many contribution’s to Nova Scotia’s history. If you can’t make it, his papers are here at the Archives and Special Collections on the 5th floor of the Killam Library.
…Halifax experienced a tragedy unlike any other in its history. At 8:40 a.m. on December 6, 1917, the SS Mont-Blanc, a fully loaded French munitions ship, collided with the Norwegian relief ship Imo. The Mont-Blanc ship caught fire and exploded roughly 25 minutes later, completely destroying buildings and structures within a two-kilometer radius. Some 2,000 people were killed by debris, fire, and collapsed buildings, and an estimated 9,000 more were injured.
Unidentified house destroyed in the Halifax Explosion, Halifax, NS, December 1917. (Thomas Head Raddall fonds, MS-2-202 Box 28, Folder 10, photograph 14)
The Halifax Explosion, as it has come to be known, remains a defining moment in Halifax’s history. The Dalhousie University Archives and Special Collections contains extensive records documenting the explosion and the events that followed. Here’s a selection from our vault:
Photographs, letters, and other materials related to the Halifax Explosion can be found throughout the Archives and Special Collections. Come visit us on the 5th floor of the Killam Memorial Library to find out more.
MacDonald Library after the Halifax Explosion, December 1917
Campus is awash in white! We were watching the snow pile up and dreading the trip home until we discovered this photograph in the business records of Standard Clay Products Limited (MS-4-103):
Snowed in? Just hook up the moose! (Standard Clay Products fonds, MS-4-103)
Looks like no snowstorm could stop this crowd from getting around! Come by the Archives and Special Collections to find more photographs of snowy scenes across Nova Scotia.
As Remembrance Day nears, we pause to remember the heroic deeds, tragic stories, and unfathomable events that caused members of our Armed Forces to be killed in the line of duty.
Here at Dalhousie, we are fortunate to have an enduring record of these events. The University Archives and Special Collections contains extensive materials on Nova Scotia’s military history.
Over the next few days, we’ll be posting selected photographs to our Facebook page (starting with this image from the Catherine Creighton and Family fonds (MS-2-656)), but in the meantime, here are a few highlights from our collections:
Check our complete list of our archival military records for more information about our military holdings. If you’ve never been in an archive, this is a great occasion to make your first trip. Drop by our Reading Room on the 5th Floor of the Killam Library to read a war diary, see photographs of fallen Dalhousie alumni, or listen to the Stadacona Band.
These materials, like all archival records, allow us to remember our past – successes and failures – and make better decisions about our future. On Remembrance Day, they allow us to say with confidence, “we will remember them.”
It may still be years away, but here in the Archives and Special Collections, we’re busily anticipating Dalhousie’s 200th anniversary in 2018. This summer we scanned a batch of University Yearbooks and made them available online in DalSpace, our institutional repository. We’ve already processed some archival records of past university presidents (e.g., Arthur Stanley MacKenzie) and we’re currently processing a variety of faculty papers.
We’ve also created a new research guide – a Guide to the History of Dalhousie. The guide pulls together some of our existing indices and research tools and adds links and online resources from other university departments.
Over the coming months, we’ll be adding links and other resources to help you research various aspects of Dalhousie’s history and development. The guide is meant for students, external researchers, and Dalhousie faculty and staff.
Let us know what you think!
Fresh off the heels of Open Access Week, we’re pleased to announce a new guide – A Guide to the Public Domain.
The public domain refers to all creative works not covered by copyright. Generally a work enters the public domain in one of three ways:
Public domain works must still be cited properly, but they can be copied, used, or modified in any way without asking for permission. Although the majority of materials held by the Dalhousie Libraries are copyrighted or under some kind of license, there is a small but growing body of materials entering the public domain. The guide provides resources and information to help you determine the copyright status of a particular work. Over time, we’ll be adding examples of items held by the Dalhousie Libraries that are in the public domain.
If you have questions about copyright, fair dealing, and the public domain, check with the Copyright Office. You can also consult the Open Access Subject Guide and the Copyright Subject Guide.
Let us know what you think!
We’re sure there are young book collectors among us who will be interested in Canada’s Third National Book Collecting Contest. The National Book Collecting Contest was created by the Bibliographical Society of Canada (BSC) in 2008 to encourage young Canadians to collect books and study the discipline of researching and writing bibliographies. The contest is open to all Canadian residents under thirty years of age as of the deadline date for submissions. According to the contest page:
The contest requires participants to write a 1,500 to 2,000-word essay on their collection, including where appropriate, the description of the books: binding, cover decoration, illustrations, and bibliographical features such as format, printing, and publication data. Example collections include children’s books, illustrated books, artists books, flip books, Arthurian legend, Generation X, eighteenth and nineteenth-century literature, serial fiction, graphic novels, a single author, cookbooks, modern authors, travel, experimental poetry, little magazines, etc. The essay may be written in French or English.
The collection must be owned and collected by the contestant. Entries must be postmarked no later than 5 March 2012. Check the contest page for more details or download this poster [PDF].