Fine arts and culture have existed in British Columbia from the time that the First Peoples came to the North Pacific coast of Canada. Vancouver’s first fine arts library was established in 1930 at the Vancouver Public Library; significant collections have subsequently been developed at the Vancouver Art Gallery, Emily Carr Institute of Art & Design and the University of British Columbia. They serve a diverse clientele: students, artists and researchers. Outlook, a province-wide network, provides access via the Internet to library catalogues of public, college and institution libraries throughout the Province.

The Melva J. Dwyer Award was established in honour of Melva Dwyer, a founding member of CARLIS, upon her retirement after 31 years of distinguished service on behalf of Canadian art librarianship and as Fine Arts Librarian at the University of British Columbia. The award is presented to the best Canadian art reference work, broadly interpreted, produced by a Canadian author. Unlike other awards, the Dwyer Award is a limited edition print by Calgary artist Susan Ford that incorporates both the concept and title of the prize. Eight awards have been presented so far, in addition to the first of the ten prints which was presented to Melva Dwyer in 1987.

During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, various government departments and several private companies engaged in an aggressive campaign to populate and develop western Canada. The cornerstone of this campaign was its publication programme. Over 300 pamphlets and brochures were published to advertise the ‘free’ lands of the Northwest. The advertising programme promoted rural settlement, depicting an idyllic landscape strongly reminiscent of ‘home’ and appealing to a young, male Anglo-Saxon population. While the campaign was successful in attracting immigrants, the reality was not always so idyllic and many settlers left. Despite the difficulties, others stayed and built rewarding lives in ‘Canada West: the new homeland’.

With the opening of its Murray Point Summer School of Art at Emma Lake in 1936, the University of Saskatchewan became the first Canadian university to establish an outdoor art school. Emma Lake is in northern Saskatchewan, and every attempt was made by the University to preserve the virgin forest in the area where the classes were held. Although primarily developed for the benefit of Saskatchewan residents, the workshops became nationally and internationally known, and acclaimed painters, sculptors and critics from across Canada, Europe and the United States made the trip north. For over twenty years students attending the school produced an annual scrapbook documenting their experience; the photographs and illustrations from those yearbooks provide both interesting social commentary and excellent documentation of a learning environment students considered ‘rich, deep and significant’.

Sweeping technological changes took place a decade ago in the Local History Room of the Saskatoon Public Library that now allow customized online searches of its photograph collection of 50,000 images. The Room was established in 1966 to collect and preserve materials relating to the history of the Saskatoon area. The Saskatoon Public Library’s photo indexing project began in 1987 and recent forays into digitization and the Internet have heightened access to the collection. Staff now receive enquiries from around the world.

The prairie city of Winnipeg boasts a thriving community of artist-run centres. Profiles of each of these centres, derived partly from their own web sites, provide a virtual tour of this community, whose history, programming, projects and initiatives sustain and promote experimental and contemporary visual culture in the city.

Western thinking, which is predominantly linear and analytical, does not adequately give access to the complexities of Inuit visual culture. However hypertext offers new possibilities for information management, and the aboriginal communities are using it creatively to share information, as for example in the Internet record of the development of Canada’s newest territory, Nunavut. This article examines how and why interactive multimedia were the means chosen to develop a master’s thesis on the Inuit artist Jessie Oonark.