Peel materials online

Bruce Peel Special Collections offers a limited number of research appointments each week (September-March), but some researchers will want to consider using digital resources where possible, and professors who are planning classes are encouraged to make use of rare materials that can be examined either as print originals or using digital reproductions, so that all options are available to your students.  

In order to help you to identify digital reproductions of primary source materials, we continue to work to add relevant links to the Research Collections page on Peel's website. Such links will help you to find digital content that has been created by U of A Library, by our colleagues at other institutions, and through collaborative projects.  Also, please note that University of Alberta Library subscribes to numerous online databases, including many that offer digitized primary source materials.

Here are some highlights of Peel's digital resources:

Peel's Digital Exhibitions - Expertly curated and filled with images of rare materials, Peel's award-winning digital exhibition program covers topics from the history of photography (Photographies) to Canadian Women Artists' Books to the source of some of the earliest ideas about witches and witch trials (Tinctor's Foul Treatise). They explore the papers (including photographs) of pioneering Western Canadian journalist Miriam Green Ellis, the complexities of interpreting primary historical materials (Sam Steele's Forty Years in Canada: History or Fiction?), and some of the most frequently-requested rare books in Bruce Peel Special Collections (Honorary Degree Books). The newest additions explore 700 years of fish on the page (The Ones That Didn't Get Away: Reflections on Fish Books and Book Collecting) and offer open access to digitized versions of the rare books on display during a major exhibition: Forgers, Fakers, and Publisher-Pirates (The Digitized Books), digitized by U of A Library or by our colleagues at other institutions.

Digitized in Subscription Databases - Some of Peel's collections have been partially digitized through databases created by major publishers and available only through subscribing libraries (including U of A Library), such as the Gregory Javitch Collection of books about Indigenous peoples and the Dr Ronald B. Madge Entomology Collection.

Digitized through Internet Archive - A selection of Peel materials have been digitized through the Internet Archive (which is free and available to all), including Treaty parchments (for Treaties 4, 6, 7, & 8), the Tinctor manuscipt, a Medieval Book of Hours, a collection of English Playbills (1779-1949), the Indigenous Photograph Collection, the Prairie Postcard Collection, and the Ariel Bension Sephardic Manuscript Collection, in addition to selections from the Gregory Javitch Collection of books about Indigenous peoples and the Dr Ronald B. Madge Entomology Collection.

Good luck with your research!