Memory Collection
The Memories of UTSC project invites you to explore the University of Toronto Scarborough's past. Browse the collection, share your memories, and help tell our story. Content includes digitized materials from our local Archives, as well as digitized staff and student publications.
Gunda Gunde Manuscript Collection
Explore this digitized manuscript collection of the 15th-century Ethiopian monastery at Gunda Gunde (Tigray Province). The Gunda Gunde Manuscript Collection contains a collection of 219 complete Ethiopian manuscripts that were photographed in 2006 during a field trip to the Gunda Gunde Former Stephanite Monastery. These manuscripts range in date from the 12/13th to the 20th centuries. The expedition to photograph the Gunda Gunde Collection was sponsored by the Hill Museum and Manuscript Library at St. John's University, Collegeville, MN.
Harley Spiller Menu Collection
Harley Spiller (1960- ) moved to New York after college in 1981 to pursue a career in the museum field. Hailing from Buffalo, NY and a graduate of Northwestern University, the self-described “meat and potatoes” Spiller was promptly introduced to the diverse cuisine of New York City. Spiller first began collecting Chinese menus on his nightly walks up and down the streets of the Upper West Side, where he lived, beginning a collection that grew through donations from those who heard of his collection (The biggest single donor of his collection is Dr. Jacqueline M. Newman, Queens College professor) and purchases from eBay.
Papers of Doris McCarthy
These digitized papers and correspondence of Doris McCarthy are provided in partnership with the Doris McCarthy Gallery, stewards of both a permanent collection of over 200 works by alumna Doris McCarthy (BA 1989) and her accumulated papers.
Animal Empire Collection
The Animal Empire collection contains digitized of material found in the Dan Bender Zoo collection, representing movie posters, ads, trading cards, postcards, books, magazines and journals related to Frank Buck (Frank Howard Buck (1884-1950), a renowned American hunter, animal collector, film director, actor author and producer. The collection also consists of material related to zoo displays and architecture, catalogues and books related to zoo and animal collecting, photographs off various zoo related animals found in different parts of America and a board game.
S. J. V. Chelvanayakam Fonds
This collection contains digitized material related to Chelvanayakam’s career as a political leader of the Sri Lankan Tamil community, as well as documenting the daily operations of the Federal Party. Material selected for digitization is drawn from the professional material contained in the S.J.V. Chelvanayakam Fonds, held at the UTSC Library archives. The digitization of this collection was managed as part of the Digital Tamil Studies project.
Tamil Nationalized and Public Domain Books Collection
The Tamil Nationalized and Public Domain Books Collection consist of more than 650 subvolumes (1100 works - 210,000 pages) of seminal Tamil works of the 20th century, spanning a range of subjects, including Tamil literature, folklore, grammar, history, politics, culture, religion, arts, science and technology. Further, the collection consists of dictionaries, lexicons, encyclopedias, and biographies. Pioneering and prominent Tamil writers represented in the collection include poet Bharathidasan, political writer Ve Saminatha Sarma, musicologist Abraham Pandithar, and technology historian A. Irakavan. Tamil Nadu government has released the vast majority of these works to the public domain. Thamizhmann publishers have compiled and published editions of these works over the past 30 years. This collection was unlocked in partnership with the Kaniyam Foundation.
Tamil Encyclopedia Collection
The Digital Tamil Encyclopedia Collection brings together digital versions of public domain Tamil encyclopedias to support easier access and use. The UTSC Library supported the digitization of the aṟiviyal kaḷañciyam (Science Encyclopedia) and the vāḻviyaṟ kaḷañciyam (Social Sciences/Humanities Encyclopedia) as part of the Digital Tamil Studies project.
Tamil Palm Leaf Manuscripts
The Digital Tamil Palm-Leaf Manuscripts Collection at the UTSC Library currently consists of 30 palm-leaf manuscripts (2599 pages). The sources were provided by Dr. Bala Sivakadadcham family, Prof. Ravi Thambi and Jeya family and Dr. Kirubakaran family from the local Tamil community. These physical manuscripts are originally from Sri Lanka, and are tentatively dated from the 1700s to 1900s by Dr. Bala Sivakadadcham. He further assisted in developing the preliminary descriptive metadata. The majority of the works are about Tamil medicine written in verse. The works also cover literature, astrology, and religion.
Brenda Beck Research Materials
Social Anthropologist Brenda Beck has dedicated her career exploring the folklore of Tamilnadu. In this collection are multiple works related to her research, kindly donated by Dr. Beck and made free for the public in digital form. Currently, the collection presents her theses, as well her retelling, animations, and graphic novels depicting the Land of Ponnivala epic, and photography and other source documents from her travels to Olappalayam in Tamil Nadu.
Creative COVID Response Collection
The Creative COVID Response Collection consists of digital representations of over 100 creative canvas works created by UTSC students in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Responses include artwork, digital art, poems, photographs, and more. Suggest new items for this collection!
The Biology Video Documentary Project Collection
The Biology Video Documentary Project Collection is a collection of engaging, documentary videos (and transcripts) that relay scientific evidence on a topic of everyday interest to a lay audience. These documentaries are short (less than 5mins) and represent outstanding work produced by UTSC students in the BIOC90H (Integrative Multimedia Documentary Project) course. The collection includes documentaries starting from 2021-2022. For more information on these collections please contact: Dr. Aarthi Ashok: aarthi.ashok@utoronto.ca or dsu.utsc@utoronto.ca
Scarborough Oral Histories Project
The Scarborough Oral Histories Project (SOHP) initiative began in the fall of 2013 with the first offering of a successful interdisciplinary course in community-based research and Oral History – involving faculty and students from City Studies, History and Womens’ and Gender Studies and led by Chris Berkowitz, HCS, Connie Guberman, HCS Women's and Gender Studies; Ahmed Allahwalla, Human Geography, City Studies; and Adon Irani, CTL, in collaboration with the UTSC library. A partial description of the pedagogical approaches taken in this course work is available in Quick Hits for teaching with digital humanities. The collection of oral histories through course-based research has continued and in 2019 a further project to capture the history of UTSC through oral histories and archival research was launched under the leadership of Dr. Christine Berkowitz.
Scarborough Data Collection
A collection of census-derived data that are Scarborough-specific, created by Workstudy student Rubina Shaik in Winter 2019. Please reach out if you have additional data to support Scarborough-specific research that you would like to contribute.
Highland Creek Photovoice Collection
The Highland Creek Photovoice Collection contains research assignments from GGRD08 a Research seminar in Environmental Geography from Fall 2022 taught by Dr. Susannah Bunce. Photovoice is a participatory qualitative method particularly relevant to the discipline of environmental geography. It allows participants to take photographs and subjectively interpret or tell stories about the content of their photographs (Cho, Kim, & Stoltman, 2021). Students used this research method to interpret social, ecological, landscape, and other relational processes in the Highland Creek Valley, adjacent to the University of Toronto Scarborough (UTSC) campus. UTSC Campus is part of the traditional territories of the Mississauga Anishinaabeg, Haudenosaunee, and Huron-Wendat, subject to the Dish with One Spoon Treaty wampum belt, Williams Treaty, and Rouge Tract land claim (Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation). Students took photos, curated the exhibit, and created the metadata represented in the collection.
Visual Dictionary of Sociology Collection
The Visual Dictionary of Sociology illustrates core sociological concepts in a way that encourages deeper thought and discussion among students. The concepts chosen were those that were most commonly misunderstood by first-year sociology students based on a review of exams and assignments. All art was created by Ujwal Mantha, in consultation with Dr. Kathy Liddle. The project received funding from the Centre for Teaching and Learning at University of Toronto Scarborough, the Department of Sociology at the University of Toronto Scarborough, and the University of Toronto Teaching Fellowship.
Maria de Lourdes Orozco Cuautle Dolls Collection
This collection of digital photographs represents a selection of traditional dolls from the collection of Maria de Lourdes Orozco Cuautle and a growing number of accompanying interpretive storymaps created by Maria and UTSC students. The dolls in this collection come from over 60 countries and serve as historical and cultural testimonies to the skills and lives of the women who made them. Many of the dolls in the collection represent indigenous stories and relationships with land, family and community.