Sointula Scuttlebut

In mid-2022, the Sointula Museum embarked on an exciting partnership with UBC iSchool students to digitize part of The Sointula Scuttlebutt Collection. This new digital archive breathed a second life into a piece of history: “The Scuttlebutt,” a newsletter that originated from the students at Malcolm Island Superior High School during the years 1953 to 1960. Would you answer a public call for a tug-of-war? Looking for love advice from Lorna Love Lorne? These newsletters offer a snapshot of life in 1950s and 1960s Sointula. In June 1966 the school closed and students transferred to the newly opened North Island Secondary School.

The project began began when the Sointula Museum became a Community Partner of
the iSchool, seeking assistance in digitizing these stories, all carefully selected based on their intellectual, historic, and physical value. Over four months, a dedicated team of students worked on various aspects, including risk assessment, collection evaluation, post-production editing, metadata creation, and digitization. The result is a freely accessible online repository, making historical research and reference materials easily available. Each newsletter issue is presented as a PDF, supplemented with a transcript, and subject keyword and full-text search capabilities.