HCMC Welcome
Humanities Computing and Media Centre
The mandate of the HCMC is to further research, teaching and learning in the faculty of Humanities, in particular the fields of Humanities Computing and Language Learning, and those aspects of other fields involving audio, video or computing technology. We host a research and development office which develops web applications, websites, on-line databases and application programs, and collaborate with a drop-in Computer Assisted Language Learning lab.
On this site you'll find information on how we can help you whether your interest is research (e.g. literary or linguistic analysis, electronic editions, research websites), teaching (using multimedia labs, creating online exercises, instructional databases), editing (e.g. managing a conference, editing a journal, maintaining a department website), or the operations of the HCMC. We also have a section specifically aimed at students, and a section on how you can borrow our equipment (from a mouse to an entire lab). Please use the navigation bar on the left or the search box to the right to move into the site.
Feature Story: The Colonial Despatches of BC and Vancouver Island
The Colonial Despatches digital archive contains the original correspondence between the British Colonial Office and the colonies of Vancouver Island and British Columbia. This project aims to digitize and publish online a complete archive of the correspondence covering the period from 1846 leading to the founding of Vancouver Island in 1849, the founding of British Columbia in 1858, the annexation of Vancouver Island by British Columbia in 1866, and up to the incorporation of B.C. into the Canadian Federation in 1871. The 1858 documents (over 600) are already online, and work is continuing on the other years.
All the material on Colonial Despatches site originates in the work of Dr. James Hendrickson and his team of collaborators at the University of Victoria, which resulted in the publication of 28 print volumes of correspondence several years ago. Those original transcriptions have been converted into TEI P5 XML, and presented in the form of highly interactive and searchable website. The site was given a formal launch on November 3, 2008, at the Maritime Museum in downtown Victoria, and has since attracted coverage in the Globe and Mail, the Vancouver Sun, the Saanich News, the Victoria Times Colonist, and A-Channel TV News.
