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  • BLOG HOME
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    • Five Things to Know About University of Alberta Library – Online Edition
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    Digitization Spotlight: Our Voice

    by Guest Author May 23, 2023
    written by Guest Author

    Written by Logan Thienes, Digitization Assistant and first-year Digital Humanities student

    The newly-digitized Our Voice collection is a complement to the digital Alberta Street News collection, which was scanned by the U of A Library in 2022 (you can read about that project here!). Both are Edmonton street newspapers, created to serve and be sold by unhoused, disabled, and unemployed people living in Edmonton.

    Our Voice, originally titled Spare Change from 1994-1996, was a spinoff from a Vancouver street newspaper also called Spare Change. Edmonton’s Our Voice first appears as a column in a March 1994 edition of Vancouver’s Spare Change, with the inaugural edition of Edmonton’s own Spare Change coming a month later in April 1994, and was renamed Our Voice two years later, in April 1996, keeping that name until the final issue in May 2005. The digital archive contains issues from Our Voice’s entire lifespan, including its first appearance in the Vancouver paper.

    Street life was the #1 concern for Our Voice. Recurring columns include stories from people living on the street, news on politics, and programs like free food events or music festivals. 

    Our Voice (February 1997, Vol. 4 No. 2)

    Vendors on the street sold Our Voice by donation. These vendors had a code of conduct for talking to passersby, and wore badges to show they were approved by the paper. Every issue included a “Vendor Profile” – a short profile of someone licensed by Our Voice to sell papers on the streets, describing their personal goals, struggles, and experiences selling the paper.

    But that’s not all! On top of those regular features, Our Voice also interviewed celebrities like Tragically Hip singer Gord Downie, director Michael Moore, and activist David Suzuki, among others. Content also included stories from across Canada and the world. Both serious topics and humour were included. The paper also featured art from people in the community and serial fiction stories.

    Major figures interviewed include:

    • David Suzuki (activist)
    • Michael Moore (director)
    • Megan Follows (actress)
    • Gord Downie (singer-songwriter)
    • Raj Pannu (NDP politician)
    • Maude Barlow (activist)
    • Ralph Klein (Alberta premier)
    • Robert Munsch (children’s author)
    Post 9/11 coverage in Our Voice October 2001

    Our Voice’s late 90s-early 2000s lifespan let it cover many world-changing topics. Issues include the September 11th attacks, the Iraq War, global warming, and more. This period also saw the Internet skyrocket in popularity, to both the fascination and detriment of small-scale newspapers. Many different (now-defunct) websites or web technologies are mentioned, making these papers a time capsule of the early Internet.

    The most serious content in Our Voice covered the dangers of street life. Accounts of violence, including from police, appear regularly. Obituaries memorialize people, typically either vendors who worked selling Our Voice or workers involved with food banks or other support networks. Oftentimes, people died under mysterious circumstances or due to the general harshness of street life, and Our Voice would provide deep and compassionate obituaries for those individuals. Thanks to this, the paper serves as a record of events and people that might be ignored by more mainstream sources.

    Digitized in-house at Cameron Library, and hosted through our partnership with Internet Archive, Edmonton’s Spare Change and Our Voice are now available to view here, alongside the previously digitized Alberta Street News collections.

    Love us on the blog? Then you’ll love us on social media! Check us out at @uofalibrary on Instagram, & Twitter!

    This content is licenced under a CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 Creative Commons licence.

    May 23, 2023 0 comment
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  • Moving the Scott Library’s Collection: Where have all the books gone?

    by Guest Author May 17, 2023
    by Guest Author May 17, 2023

    University of Alberta Library is celebrating the new Geoffrey & Robyn Sperber Health Sciences Library, which is anticipated to open in Fall 2023. This post is part of a series that will showcase the Sperber Library over the next several months. This post was written by Connie Winther, Head, Faculty Engagement (Health Sciences) Most people have moved houses or apartments. This requires a lot of boxes, a truck or two, a moving…

  • Connecting. Engaging. Creating. Representing Vision through Design

    by Guest Author May 4, 2023
    by Guest Author May 4, 2023

    University of Alberta Library is celebrating the new Geoffrey & Robyn Sperber Health Sciences Library, which is anticipated to open in Fall 2023. This post is part of a series that will showcase the Sperber Library over the next several months. This post was written by Janet Koshuta, from Start Architecture As architects, engineers, and designers, we are in a unique position to be able to articulate the quality of space in…

  • Folding, Unfolding, Refolding Maps in the Community

    by Guest Author May 2, 2023
    by Guest Author May 2, 2023

    This post was written by GIS Librarian, Larry Laliberte Map staff conduct tours that bring the community into the library to interact with the collection. We also bring spatial materials from the collection out to interact with the community. The following sketches are three recent examples of maps as troubadours. Driven off campus, onto hastily arranged tables at Harry Ainlay school. Walked across campus, to be overlaid on the Indigenous Peoples Atlas of…

  • Touring Through an Open House: Navigating the William C. Wonders Map Collection’s Colonial Legacies

    by Guest Author April 27, 2023
    by Guest Author April 27, 2023

    This post was written by GIS Librarian, Larry Laliberte In March 2020, the University of Alberta William C. Wonders map collection sheltered in place as a global pandemic unfolded. It would be a year before staff could return in full, creating a disconnect from the physical space. During this absence, map staff began planning in-person map collection tours that would recalibrate the collection as evidence of extractive dispossession, rhumb the maps as…

  • Who are Geoffrey and Robyn Sperber?

    by Guest Author April 20, 2023
    by Guest Author April 20, 2023

    University of Alberta Library is celebrating the new Geoffrey & Robyn Sperber Health Sciences Library, which is anticipated to open in Fall 2023. This post is part of a series that will showcase the Sperber Library over the next several months. This post was written by Chief Librarian, Dale Askey Although it has yet to open, in the Library we already call the new health sciences library, currently under construction, the “Sperber…

  • Discover Archives: Getting to Know Archival Descriptions

    by Guest Author April 11, 2023
    by Guest Author April 11, 2023

    This post was written by Digital Archivist, Maryna Chernyavska In previous posts, we introduced you to the University of Alberta Archives and some of the ways you can search our holdings, and shared some tips on how to search the Discover Archives database. Today, we would like you to get to know archival descriptions and how they help you discover archival materials. You might have noticed that Discover Archives database looks and…

  • Connecting. Engaging. Creating: Envisioning a bold new health sciences library for the future

    by Guest Author March 28, 2023
    by Guest Author March 28, 2023

    University of Alberta Library is celebrating the new Geoffrey & Robyn Sperber Health Sciences Library, which is anticipated to open in Fall 2023. This post is part of a series that will showcase the Sperber Library over the next several months. This post was written by Denise LaFitte In mid-2019, the University of Alberta Library (UAL), in conjunction with Facilities & Operations (F&O), began conversations about moving out of the current Scott…

  • Searching the University of Alberta Archives: Using Discover Archives

    by Guest Author March 23, 2023
    by Guest Author March 23, 2023

    A couple of months ago we introduced you to the University of Alberta Archives and some of the ways you can search our holdings. Today Digital Archivist, Maryna Chernyavska take a deeper dive into the Discover Archives database.  About Discover Archives Discover Archives is an online archival database that allows you to discover what archival materials are housed at the University of Alberta Archives (UAA), Bruce Peel Special Collections and the University…

  • Click&Push adds Cameron Library to “The Atlas”

    by Guest Author March 21, 2023
    by Guest Author March 21, 2023

    This post was written by Click&Push Research Coordinator, Sydney Hampshire Recently, the University of Alberta Library (UAL) partnered with local startup, Click&Push Accessibility Inc. (C&P), to create an indoor accessibility map of Cameron Library on North Campus. C&P are the builders of the mobile phone app, The Atlas.  The Atlas was built to help pedestrians navigate the outdoor built environment. It is a community-sourced, voice-interactive navigation app. The Atlas empowers digital citizens…

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