Environment and Resource Studies student Mathure Sivananthan joined Special Collections for the winter term as a Special Collections Project Assistant to assist with some of the department’s latest digital projects.
One of Mathure’s key projects was the development of the digital collection “Kitchener: 100 Years of Cityhood” on Special Collections’ Historypin channel. Historypin works with GoogleMaps to overlay historical images of locations on the current Google streetview. This collection includes 100 images of structures, exteriors, and streetscapes of Kitchener to honour the City of Kitchener’s 100th anniversary of cityhood in 2012.
The images include public, commercial, and residential buildings over the years - mansions and tenements, factories, stores, and offices. The streetscapes give a taste of city life in the downtown, shady residential streets, and raw suburbs under construction.
Mathure Sivananthan at her computer shows an image of the Kaufman building in Kitchener as it appears on Special Collections' Historypin channel.
Mathure has focused on the digital work of scanning photographs and negatives and “pinning” them onto Historypin. She and other Special Collections’ staff have used city directories and fire insurance plans to help determine the original locations of these images.
“I have gained a lot of insight into the history of the region working here,” Mathure says.
Mathure’s other projects this term have included preservation scanning of deteriorating negatives, checking the quality of film and documents, and assisting the Head of Collections, Susan Mavor, with presentations relating to her recently published book Westmount: The Tie that Binds the Twin Cities.
For more information on Special Collections’ Historypin channel, contact:
Archivist, Special Collections
Ext. 32445
University of Waterloo Library
200 University Avenue West
Waterloo, Ontario, Canada N2L 3G1
519 888 4883
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