The Year Book of British Columbia and Manual of Provincial Information by R.E. Gosnell (1860-1931), the first British Columbia Legislative Librarian and first Provincial Archivist, is a fascinating look at life in this province at the turn of the century.

This is the 1901 edition, which includes information back to 1897. Gosnell’s Year Book went through five editions between 1897 and 1914. Except for the first edition, which Gosnell self-published at a loss, all other editions were published by the Province of British Columbia and are in the pubic domain (copyright expired 50 years after publication). This is the only work by R. E. Gosnell to be transferred from hardcopy or microfilm into digital format. All his other publications are available only in hardcopy, microfilm or microfiche in the B.C. Archives and other libraries. The 1901 edition of his Year Book was selected for digitization because it coincides with the start of the 20th and 21st centuries.

The most controversial and problematic aspect of Gosnell's book is in his references to Aboriginal peoples. Because this digital representation of his book is presented as a historical resource, no changes to his language were made. Readers are cautioned that no endorsement of Gosnell's views is intended by anyone involved with this project, and material has been left unchanged solely for the purpose of preserving the original historical content. For anyone seeking to understand some of the attitudes and approaches of a 19th century scholar such as Gosnell, his Year Book still has great value as a historical and statistical text.

This site provides an excellent opportunity to explore the rich history of British Columbia as it was interpreted at the start of the 20th century. Gosnell provides glimpses into the beginnings of the some of B.C.'s largest industries: forestry and tourism. Other resource-based industries on which the province's economy depended -- mining, fishing, agriculture -- are examined in detail.

There is no historic content about British Columbia at this level of detail on a public Web site. The Gosnell Year Book was an important contribution in its day towards publicizing the economic and social growth of the province, as well as documenting aspects of the province’s history. The Web site will illustrate in a basic way through links to other Web sites how social conditions and attitudes towards First Nations, the environment, and social structures have changed over the last century.

The Digital Year Book of British Columbia, 1901-2001 is a hypertext representation of the original publication. Not all typographical conventions of the original text were translated into hypertext markup language (HTML). Gosnell's spellings, including his spellings of place names, except for actual typographical errors, were retained. Not all of the scanned pages were transformed into text files using optical character recognition. Pages or sections which were retained as image files consist mostly of numerical data. The original book's index does not form part of this site.

Foreword to The Digital Year Book of British Columbia, 1901-2001 by Joan Barton, Legislative Librarian

Foreword to The Digital Year Book of British Columbia, 1901-2001 by Gary A. Mitchell, Provincial Archivist