Tag Archives: Historypin

The Archives continues ‘pinning’ content to Historypin!

Posted on September 20, 2012 by | Leave a comment

This isn’t the first time we’ve blogged about our Historypin page. We’ve recently taken the time, however, to add a number of new features to our Historypin Channel. In addition to over 200 new photos, we’ve added a number of site-specific moving image files from the 1920s to the 1970s!

Here is a screenshot with one of our photographs ‘pinned’ in Street View. Using the ‘Fade’ bar on the left you can fade out the archival image to see what that intersection looks like in Street View today.

One of our summer interns, Jesse Cumming, identified 200+ photos to add to our Historypin Channel. He also created a couple of unique “Tours” (click on the “Tours” tab to view). The first is called Vancouver in Motion and collects all our newly added moving image clips. The second, A 360° trip down Burrard, brings together photographs from the City of Vancouver Transportation Division, to create a tour down Burrard St. from Broadway to Hastings, showing 360° views of intersections along the way. Continue reading →

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Posted in General, Holdings

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Archives film part of Jubilee Concert

Posted on June 5, 2012 by | Leave a comment

We’re honoured that one of our films was part of yesterday’s Diamond Jubilee Concert at Buckingham Palace.

We had contributed, via Youtube,  a copy of the film to Historypin’s Pinning the Queen’s History collection. An excerpt was selected to be part of the animation that was projected on Buckingham Palace during the concert.

This is the animation. Our excerpt appears at about 1 minute, and it shows the Queen watching an assembly of children creating a dogwood-flower-shaped formation in Queen Elizabeth park.

Yes, the pin representing our video is stuck in the middle of the Prairies. That’s because it represents the Queen’s 1959 visit to Canada, not Vancouver.

The longer video from which the excerpt was taken is below. You can see the children preparing for their formation, and more of the presentation itself. It is Reference code VPK-S652-: MI-111.

You don’t have to be royalty to use one of our videos. We invite you to find and download some and get creative.

 

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Posted in Digitization, Holdings, Public Programming

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Historypin update

Posted on March 30, 2012 by | Leave a comment

We’ve written about our partnership with Historypin before, and the work of many of our volunteers to prepare images for pinning.

Masthead for our Historypin channel

Historypin has just rolled out customized channels. We’ve created a channel where you can find all our pinned content as well as a story feed. In the lower left corner you can find Historypin repeats, which are modern replicas of our images taken using the Historypin Smartphone App and overlaid on the older image. This one was contributed by jkeller – thanks!

We now have 523 images pinned to the Historypin map. We’d love to have you contribute stories about our images, or use them to create a Historypin Tour or Collection.

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Spotlight on Volunteers – Christine Tutt

Posted on January 19, 2012 by | Leave a comment

Numerous projects outside the Archives staff’s regular course of business have been accomplished thanks to our many wonderful volunteers. Christine Tutt began volunteering at the Archives the summer before she began the Library and Information Technology program at Langara College.

One of the many projects Christine has been working on. Glass snipe from 1923. Item # CVA 371-2809. Continue reading to learn more about snipes!

With great enthusiasm and dedication, Christine has generously spent more than 230 hours working on various projects at the Archives. Even now that she is a full-time student, Christine has continued to come into the Archives each week. As a Library Technician, Continue reading →

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New photography exhibit – Merging Time: Vancouver Through The Lens

Posted on September 16, 2011 by | 1 Comment

On display from September 21st to December 23rd, Merging Time: Vancouver Through the Lens is the City of Vancouver Archives’ latest collaborative effort with the Langara Professional Photo Imaging Department.

Merging Time: Vancouver Through The Lens

In early 2011, students in Darren Bernaerdt’s Introduction to Photo Imaging class (Photo 1248) were given an assignment at the City of Vancouver Archives to find historical black and white photographs of Vancouver. Half of the students chose photographs between 1919 and 1948, and the other half selected ones before 1919. The majority of the photographs were taken when the buildings were only a few years old. Today, many of these buildings have heritage status. Continue reading →

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Spotlight on Volunteers – Helen Lee

Posted on August 8, 2011 by | Leave a comment

We’ve been very lucky this summer to be able to take on several talented volunteers who have graciously tackled a number of projects we just can’t get to during the regular course of our day here at the Archives. Helen Lee volunteered with us for about six weeks in May and June and generously gave us over 100 hours of her time.

Helen was the curatorial eye behind the selection from our holdings of over 300 photographs of Vancouver at street level for use in our new Historypin page.


Historypin allows users to upload content and then “pin” it to a Google map. Images can be overlaid onto Google Street View to show then-and-now views for a location. Helen’s background in urban and heritage planning was of great use in selecting these photographs and in identifying or clarifying address-related data.

Hotel Europe at 43 Powell Street as seen on Google Street View

Hotel Europe at 43 Powell Street in 1931. Item number CVA 99-3892

Helen also worked on a more straightforward project involving the unfolding and logging of dozens of architectural drawings. This task may seem a bit mundane, Continue reading →

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We’re on the Historypin Map

Posted on July 11, 2011 by | 2 Comments

An exciting new interactive platform for mapping and sharing historical content is launching today, and we’ve made Vancouver a hotspot.

Historypin has been on the web in beta-test form for the past year, and, as such, won a 2011 Webby Award for Best Nonprofit/Charitable Site. Now it is launching both the upgraded platform and a mobile application. Historypin allows users to upload content and then “pin” it to a Google map. Images can be overlaid on Google Maps Street View to show then-and-now for a location.

Sample overlaid image - not Vancouver

We have our own Historypin page, where you can view the images we’ve contributed so far. One of our wonderful volunteers, Helen Lee, selected hundreds of photographs of Vancouver as seen at street level, and our colleagues at Vanmap geo-coded them so they could be pinned to the map. Historypin is busy aligning the images in Street View. We’ve tried to concentrate the images in the Downtown/Gastown area to create a hotspot of historical images. Continue reading →

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