UBC Digitization Initiatives: BC Bibliography

There's lots to find in BC Bibliography, "a collaborative venture to combine the traditional tools of bibliography with the new tools of the digital world to transform our understanding of and insight into the history and life of British Columbia." While it's British Columbia focused you can find material from much further afield as illustrated by this sketch of "the Sandinian in the Ice off Newfoundland," from the book Canadian Pictures published in 1884.

You can browse page by page or search the full text of 579 books from the 1840s to the 1930s, particularly rich from the 1860s to 1880s. Try family surnames and places. I found an Ordish, one of my family names, in a directory that included California.