A Must See Resource for Islander Researchers

The Island Archives Centre at the University of Prince Edward Island is a great resource for people with ancestors from the island.

They are digitizing many records and they are being put online.

Island Lives is a collection of PEI’s local histories. You can search by title, people, places and organization name. When you search by people and choose a name then you get a selection of publications where the name is found. You can read online, download or borrow the resource. You are only able to borrow if you live in PEI. You may be able to find the books via Inter Library loan.

Island Newspapers are endeavoring to develop a collection of PEI historic newspapers. The newspapers available will eventually date back to the early 1800s. You can view The Guardian (1880-1921), The Cadre (1969-) and The Sun (1977-). This is a work in progress.

Island Voices is an oral history audio archive that has been created by Reg “Dutch” Thompson a well known historian. The archives mostly cover the 1920s thorough the 1940s. They have a User Guide to help you search and use the database.

Island Stories is still a work in progress and not searchable. They are going to help the community to preserve any archival material that they may have and make it available to others.

Island Images is described as “the most complete collection of visuals by Islanders, and about Islanders. Drawing from the rich collections of the University of Prince Edward Island” and others. This is not available yet.

Island Imagined is a wonderful collection of PEI maps, atlases and gazetteers. There are approximately 1000 such documents. The maps come from The Prince Edward Island Archives and Public Record Office, the Prince Edward Island Museum and Heritage Foundation, and the Robertson Library, University of Prince Edward Island.

These maps are interactive. You have three choices: map overlays, map timeline and island timeline. Map overlays have a choice of four maps and they put the map over a current Google Maps image. Map timeline has a line of years across the bottom and when you click on 1900AD then the maps relating to that time period are presented and you can click on the map to view a description. When you click on the title of the description you get an image of the map which you can manipulate to zoom in or out.

Island timeline is an Island history timeline. You click on a time period and a group of selections appear on the timeline. If you click one of them you get a description of an event that happened. You can not click on the titles to find out more. This is a great resource to put flesh on the bones of your family history.

There is a section called Learn More and here you can find FAQ, learning guides, working with maps, articles and online books. Eventually you will also be able to access lesson plans.

Other Collections details and links to other resources. University of PEI provides descriptions and links to archival material relating to the University. There is also a link to Digital Herbarium where they are digitizing and providing access to plant specimens collected at the University since the 1960s. There are nearly 2000 specimens.

If you have people from the Island then this is the place to go to find out more.

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