Digitizing the Bostock Air Photo Collection: Making Air Photos Discoverable by Features and Subject Classification

This presentation will be on the recent digitization and publication of the 'Bostock air photos special collection' by the University of Ottawa Library. In 1968, H. S. Bostock published “A Catalogue of Selected Airphotographs”, a catalogue of selected air photos of geomorphologic phenomena in Canada, for the Geological Survey of Canada. This catalogue included over 800 air photos, both verticals and obliques, from the National Air Photo Library (NAPL). The photos were selected to highlight various subjects or phenomena found in Canada, with an emphasis placed on glaciological and glacial features. Examples of classifications of features included: landslides, waterfalls, canyons, deltas, estuaries, folded strata, highland glacier systems, shelf ice, glacier dammed lakes, volcanoes, meteorite craters, and many more. These photos covered much of northern Canada and originated from hundreds of flightlines generally taken between the 1940s and ‘60s. The uOttawa Library has had this collection in its holdings in paper format for decades but was the subject of a digitization project in fall 2023 and published to the uOttawa Library’s Digital Asset Management System (DAMS) for improved accessibility, preservation, and distribution. The associated catalogue from Bostock provided additional metadata for the photos, such as the general region, subject classification, and a description of the features in each image. With this digital collection, users can now search for model photos matching a variety of geomorphological features by keyword to support research and learning.