HCMC Blogs

Today was fun, went out again to see some churches "in the field." First I visited St. Stephen's out in Saanichton (a beautiful church if anyone wants a photographing spot) and the rector gave me a free copy of their church history book. Their cemetery had some good grave stones and they had a rather large and detailed honour roll which will be very handy for cross-referencing. Then I stopped in for a visit with the rector of St. Mary's who had some amazing things to show me. There are plenty of monuments to look at and the colours of the 88th regiment which are almost falling apart. She had photocopies of church histories and the personal story of the Rev. Andrews who served overseas. She also has some info on a woman's wood carving guild which she said was very special in the community back then.

Spent the afternoon building up some photos in the archive, hope they work! Hannah, I'll be joining you tomorrow, hopefully they got my registration email! HCMC is kicking me out now, see some of you tomorrow.

Ben

In the kerfluffle last week with the eXist server and contained webapps, the Francotoile webapp was somehow corrupted. After an hour or two, we got the instance going again, but then discovered that the password for the admin client no longer worked, so we wouldn't be able to update the webapp. Solution was to replace the instance of the webapp on the server with a copy of it on my local machine.

Basic procedure to replace a corrupted instance of a webapp e.g. francotoile
- log in as tapor to tomcat manager on server (peach)
- undeploy webapp
- go back in browser to safe URL (one without undeploy instruction in it)
- ftp in as hcmc to server (peach.hcmc.uvic.ca)
- cd up and down to /usr/local/tomcat-instances/devel/webapps/
- delete old folder
- upload new folder (same name as old folder)
- refresh webapp listing in tomcat manager
- app should appear, click deploy

Hi everyone,

I found a place on campus to borrow a digital camera yesterday, so I could get started. I then headed down to Victoria City Archives. I had a different archivist than before, and they told me that I should not take photos of anything until they have worked out a licensing agreement with Jim. Instead, I was instructed to go through absolutely everything, make a complete list of everything I would want to scan or photograph, and then submit it to Jim with the paperwork so he could arrange for the payment of fees and what not. So, I am just going through finding aids and inventories, looking at artifacts, and deciding everything that I will photograph right now. I may put this on hold for today though, if I can get a hold of the archivist at Victoria High. They only come in on Tuesday, so I might go down there and check their collection out. At 4 pm, I have an appointment at St. Michael's.

The minutes are from Friday and yesterday.

Hi everyone,

I found a place on campus to borrow a digital camera yesterday, so I could get started. I then headed down to Victoria City Archives. I had a different archivist than before, and they told me that I should not take photos of anything until they have worked out a licensing agreement with Jim. Instead, I was instructed to go through absolutely everything, make a complete list of everything I would want to scan or photograph, and then submit it to Jim with the paperwork so he could arrange for the payment of fees and what not. So, I am just going through finding aids and inventories, looking at artifacts, and deciding everything that I will photograph right now. I may put this on hold for today though, if I can get a hold of the archivist at Victoria High. They only come in on Tuesday, so I might go down there and check their collection out. At 4 pm, I have an appointment at St. Michael's.

Hello all,

I've updated the spreadsheet for the documents we're collecting and saved it in the "Archive" folder on Dropbox. I've also made us each a folder there to upload documents. Make sure that all documents uploaded to your folder are entered into the spreadsheet and labeled with the reference number you've assigned it. This could become a mess if we don't keep things organized from the beginning. If you want to add a new tag, or change an existing one, make sure that you add it in all the sheets so that the tags are consistent. It will probably be easier for me to make the tags more board in the future, so if you're not sure about a tag, it is better if it's more specific.

I also went to the View Royal Archives today. One volunteer has compiled a book about her father who was held in Germany as a POW for 3 years. I'm in contact with her sister to get digital copies of the oral histories, letters, and photographs she used.

I've also been in contact with the Central Saanich Archives and they are keen to be involved.

In the afternoon, I started to call the local band offices. I have a few good leads and I will follow them tomorrow!

Ashley

Hi,

I had a field trip day today, going out to Sooke and Colwood which garnered all the names of Soldiers from Jordan River to 17 Mile House (98 soldiers) including which ones died, as well as checking out some grave sites and getting contact info for historians at the Sooke Museum and Colwood Historical Commission who have each written books about the area during our time period. In Colwood I met with Dick Emory whose father served as a signalman in France with the 88th and was wounded there. He had some great artifacts including the original discharge papers, his father's pay book, and the telegrams sent to his family when he was injured. He also had some good photographs. He'll keep me informed of further finds and any developments from the Historical Commission. My plans for the rest of the week include a date with some regimental colours, checking out some local church honour rolls, and possibly visiting Pearkes' grave. I've been in contact with all the Anglican churches now, so I'll start moving into the other smaller-number denominations this week too.

(I was going to post a photo of what I found today, but my computer won't read my camera card at the moment, so I'll get back to you on that one...)

Trying to get a couple of presentations for July prepared before Congress, so we can concentrate on the big MoEML one afterwards.