The British Columbia Courthouse Library and UBC Law Library have worked cooperatively on a project to digitize the British Columbia Reports, with funding provided by the Notary Foundation of B.C.
The British Columbia Reports is a law report series that was first published in 1884 by the Law Society of British Columbia, with judgments dating back to 1867. The series ceased publication in 1948. This collection includes the full text of all decisions published in the series.
This was our first foray into a joint digitization project. The British Columbia Reports will now be freely accessible to anyone world-wide. Researchers will be able to search the judgments by keywords and the electronic version of the Reports will provide a back-up to the paper copies which deteriorate with age. A tutorial is being developed to help researchers make the most of this resource.
The Reports, as a body of work, contains important social and legal history of this province, in addition to charting the development of British Columbia law through the course of its publishing history. The British Columbia Reports is an important resource for legal researchers, historians, genealogists, and British Columbians in general, due to the fact that it provides a collection of unique primary information on society and individuals living in British Columbia in the late 19th and early 20th Centuries.
Visit the website: http://bchistory.library.ubc.ca/?db=bcreports. The actual digitization work and the development of the website was spear-headed by Chris Hives and his team in University Archives.