A new look at old photos: Oak Bay properties in appraisal cards - Municipal Hall foyer display Aug-Sept 2022
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Much of my Oak Bay working time in August was taken up with making a large collection of photos of Oak Bay properties, taken from historic long appraisal cards (municipal Finance department, Archives series CR 140 AC-L), available online.
90%, almost 5000 cards, were scanned by Archives volunteers 2017-2020; I finished photographing the final 550 ahead of the 2021 MH renovation work. This year, the next layer of processing: renaming the files to include their archival reference code as well as the relevant street address, extracting the small photos from each image (photos are typically in the top right hand corner of the card and measure 2x3"), watermarking each photo, uploading batches of photos, and checking for errors at each stage.
Why watermark photos? To make it easy for researchers to find the source. Digital images take on a life of their own and, in practical terms, just aren't 'controllable' once they're online; they often circulate informally without captions or dates, let alone any other original contextual information, link back, or acknowledgement, and it's important that someone who finds one photo of interest is able to get in touch and investigate the possibility of more images and information relevant to their research. That's it.
The photos are not dated; the cards were in use 1950s-1970s. This series of historic appraisal cards is not complete for every property or street in Oak Bay, and not every extant card includes a photo.
Browse all 1800 photos in this series @OakBayArchives on Flickr: https://bit.ly/3SH0ERD
As part of the Oak Bay Village history project, this foyer display focuses on photographs of Oak Bay Avenue properties from the long appraisal cards. NB street addresses on these photos are those on the corresponding cards, but some may have changed over time - another reason to get in touch before using!
These images were created in the course of District business by District staff after 1948, and remain in copyright (c) The Corporation of the District of Oak Bay.
Questions? Please get in touch!
Website: https://www.oakbay.ca/archives
Photo Search: https://www.oakbay.ca/archives/photographs
Blog posts: https://connect.oakbay.ca/archives
Email: archives@oakbay.ca
Phone: 250-598-3290
- Post by Anna Sander, 2 September 2022.
To cite: Sander, Anna. (2022, September). 'A new look at historic photos of Oak Bay properties - Municipal Hall foyer display Aug-Sept 2022'. [Blog post]. District of Oak Bay, Archives. Retrieved from https://connect.oakbay.ca/admin/projects/archives/news_feed/a-new-look-at-historic-photos-of-oak-bay-properties-municipal-hall-foyer-display-aug-sept-2022 [date].
