What We Have

The BC Archives holds millions of treasures that document the history of British Columbia. Our collection consists of both archival records and published material, which we maintain in two separate collections.

BC Archives collection

Records in our archives collection include government, private, genealogical and Indigenous material and come in a variety of formats. This collection includes

  • 110,000 boxes of textual records
  • 180,000 cartographic records and technical and architectural drawings
  • 5 million photographic materials with (more than 100,000 digitized)
  • 27,000 sound recordings
  • 12,600 film and video titles
  • 10,300 works of art

Our archives collection is described according to Canadian archival standards. See our Guide to Archival Description for more information

BC Archives Library collection

The library contains published materials related to the history and culture of British Columbia. This collection houses more than 72,000 publications which can be accessed onsite in our Reference Room.

Links

To learn more about the materials held at the BC Archives, see:

To search the collections held by the BC Archives and for online resources see:

We have an agreement with the Sisters of St Ann, whose archives are located in our building. To read more about them, see:

To learn more about the different types of records we have, see: