Spotlight - Online Libraries and Archives: British Columbia, Canada The British Columbia Archives (http://www.bcarchives.gov.bc.ca/textual/general.genealog.htm) has made some of its resources available online for genealogical research. These resources can be accessed from the site's main genealogy page. Vital Events Indexes The Vital Events indexes are the featured online resource of the British Columbia (BC) Archives. Vital statistic registrations did not begin until 1872, when British Columbia became a province of Canada. Some vital events that took place before 1872 and were registered after that date do appear in the indexes. The Vital Events indexes include births from 1872 to 1903, marriages from 1872 to 1929, and deaths from 1872 to 1984. You will also find an index to Colonial Marriages for the period from 1859 to 1872. The search results will provide you with summary information about the vital event. You can search one index at a time or all genealogy indexes together. With the Basic Search function you can search by surname, given names, place, and year. The Advanced Search function allows you to search by all text, surname, given names, gender, place, full date, year, month, day, and record type. You can specify sort order of the results by using the dropdown list on the search screen. The summary vital information resulting from a search of any of the indexes includes the full name(s), complete date, and location where the event took place. For the Colonial Marriage index the location information includes not only name of the city or town in which the marriage took place but also the name of the church. All results also include the event's registration number and microfilm reel number for records that have been filmed. Digital images of the records are available for purchase. Additional items that may be of interest to someone researching his or her family history in British Columbia are: Visual Records - Photographs, Paintings, Drawings, and Prints A number of unique collections are represented in the Visual Records holdings of the British Columbia Archives. Special subject collections include the Bordertown Collection of historic railway photographs and the F. V. Longstaff Collection, which documents military and social history of the province in the early twentieth century. The searchable database includes over 130,000 text descriptions of items in the documentary art collection, with more than 80,000 images available for viewing online. The index can be browsed by title, subject, photographer or artist, and by geographic region. You can also execute a basic search of the index by name, keyword or phrase, or an advanced search by a combination of criteria. Cartographic Records - Maps, Plans, Architectural Drawings and Charts The BC Archives Cartographic Records on-site collection contains over 63,000 maps, atlases, and architectural drawings related to the province of British Columbia. Seven hundred of these maps are found in the full-text searchable Cartographic Records Index. There are also approximately forty maps currently available online in digital format. These maps may only be access by clicking on the individual map links found on the Cartographic Records homepage. Check out the British Columbia Archives at http://www.bcarchives.gov.bc.ca/textual/general.genealog.htm if your search for ancestors takes you to western Canada. Sally Rolls Pavia sallypavia2001@yahoo.com "Save the Earth, it's the only planet with Chocolate!" List Owner: GENEALOGYBITSANDPIECES-L-request@rootsweb.com Archives: http://archiver.rootsweb.com/th/index/GENEALOGYBITSANDPIECES "All incoming and outgoing email checked by Norton Anti-Virus"