Collections News

Ukrainian News/Українські Bіcті was published in Edmonton between 1928 and 2017. It was a Ukrainian-language publication until the 1980s, when it changed to a bilingual English-Ukrainian format. This newspaper is a wonderful resource for researchers and anyone interested in the history of Edmonton’s Ukrainian community. The Ukrainian News was first digitized and made available on the Internet Archive in 2023. This year we uploaded a second batch.

Included in our second batch of uploads is this earliest edition we have digitized: Vol. 10 (1937), numbers 1-52. Those of us who can’t read Ukrainian can enjoy getting a sense of the culture of the 30’s through the ads and other visuals!

This digitization project is carried out with the publisher’s permission and in collaboration with the Kule Folklore Centre.

See also the growing Ukrainian Studies collection for a wide array of digitized materials related to Ukrainian culture in North America.

To learn more about all our collections, visit our Digitized collections webpage!

 

The Internet Archive recently reached an incredible milestone with 1 trillion web pages preserved through the Wayback Machine!

Since 1996, libraries and archives around the world have been working together to capture the web, ensuring future generations can explore and learn from the internet’s past.

As one of the early adopters of web archiving in Canada, the University of Alberta Library is proud to have played a part in this global effort to safeguard our digital history.

University of Alberta Library’s contributions so far:

• 42.1 terabytes of preserved data
• 817 million+ web documents archived

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For questions, site suggestions, or referrals, contact the Web Archiving Team at webarch@ualberta.ca

Most map collections are typically flush with historic and contemporary physical and political maps of their region. However, a deficit commonly exists for original historic maps published throughout the rest of the world. This is where the acquisition of reproductions, facsimiles and realia of historically significant cartographic items comes into play.
Over the last 25 years with increasing scanner sizes, exponential bandwidths, and colossal servers it has become commonplace to discover and download one of the most nonuniform of print formats, the map. An infinite spatial collage can now be found online through a wide variety of platforms ranging from national, regional libraries, and archives, to the toppermost of the poppermost¹ and extremely well financed Davis Rumsey Map Collection. 

The William C. Wonders Map Collection began long before the Internet. The collection started in the geography department during the 1950s.² At this time (up to the 2000’s) map reproductions were distributed through various analogue sources. This included calendars,³ NMC (National Map Collection) reproductions,⁴ the Association of Canadian Map Libraries and Archives Historical Maps Series, the Historic Urban Plans series of reprints of cities worldwide. During the 1960s many atlas facsimiles were acquired through an Amsterdam publishing house Theatrum Orbis Terrarum.⁵ In more recent times the map collection has acquired two additional, detailed and highly consulted reproductions. These are the Erdapfel (Earth Apple) Globe, originally published in 1492, and the Hereford Mappa Mundi produced in c. 1300. 

Erdapfel (Earth Apple) Globe

This realia reproduction of the 1492 Erdapfel (Earth Apple) globe⁶ by Martin Behaim has become a go-to teaching aid during map collection engagement activities. We welcome students to touch, turn and examine the globe closely. Then we inquire “what is missing?” After a pause, and often a hint, classes notice that the Americas are absent. The globe was in production as Columbus set sail. The Earth Apple also serves as a spatial golden spike, for those who lean toward the Columbia Exchange as the beginning of the Anthropocene.⁷ Representing a Eurocentric world on the doorstep of colonizing vast swaths of the earth.

Figure 1. A small selection of William C. Wonders Map Collection facsimiles. Check out the following link for a list of the items displayed.

Hereford Mappa Mundi 

This particular reproduction has over 100 kilometers of travel under its T in O⁸ belt. Serving as the center piece for many high school outreach spatial literacy presentations. It is also a must see for tours, and workshops. Classes and individuals spend time trying to re-orient themselves in this unfamiliar medieval vision of the world that places East at the top of the map(pa). If individuals want to investigate further, the Hereford Mappa Mundi includes two informative volumes that expand upon the details of every symbol, place and mythological figure.

If you are interested in interacting with any of the reproductions mentioned above or think they may be useful in your liaison areas please reach out to us at data@ualberta.ca

Welcome to our second new feature, Flying Around in Aviary! This is where we spotlight the latest and greatest projects the Digital Repositories team have been hatching—things you might want to take a quick peek at (or dive right into).

So, what’s flying around in Aviary this week? The Fountains of Data collection is an open access repository of data from and about ancient Celtic healing fountains in Brittany, France gathered by Marilène Oliver (Art & Design) in 2024. It contains interactive LiDAR scans, 360º videos and immersive sound recordings of over 60 healing fountains, plus fascinating insights into each fountain’s unique rituals and lores.

If Daylight Savings has you feeling a little dim, step into this virtual world of lush greenery, rushing water, and cheerful birdsong. Your screen might not smell like moss or mist, but it’s the next best thing.

Welcome to the Digital Repositories team’s first new newsletter feature: Nuggets of Knowledge in ERA! This is where we share fascinating finds and hidden (open-access!) gems from ERA that we’ve stumbled across while exploring the archives. Think of it as a little brain snack: quick, curious reads to give your mind a breather.

We’re supposed to get (real) snow here in Edmonton pretty soon, and so you’ve likely started preparing: getting the shovel and extension cords up from the basement, dusting off your winter coat from the back of your closet, and mentally preparing for the nightmare of having soggy socks after shoveling out your driveway from a heavy snowfall. Did you know that someone actually ran a study on how wet your socks can get before they become a cool, wet prison in your boots?

Apparently, yes. Nicole Furtak actually ran the numbers on soggy socks in her thesis, Socks: Correlation of Wetness Perceptions with Moisture Transport available on ERA. Using a method called Algorithmic Image Analysis (AIA), she studied how different fabrics handle moisture and how that affects comfort. She tested a range of sock materials, even ran wear trials with real people ranking socks from driest to dampest. The verdict? Some socks are scientifically drier than others, and AIA can predict how dry your feet will feel.

So next time your boots betray you, remember: there’s real research behind your soggy socks.