The Annat Point mill in the Scottish highlands in 1983. The outfall is to the left.
The Environmental Sciences Archives (ESA) was established by the University of Victoria Archives to preserve, protect and provide public access to valuable unique or rare environmental material documenting the scientific examination of environmental stresses. An advisory committee of scientists supports the work and development of the ESA.
Each archival fonds is listed by the name of the creator of the fonds. Each listing includes a summary description of the fonds, and a complete inventory with series and file level control. The term, fonds, is used to identify all the archival material, regardless of form or medium, that has been created, accumulated, and used by a particular individual or corporate body in the course of that creator's activities or functions, and set aside for future reference.
The project was initiated in 1996 by Professor Derek Ellis on his retirement from teaching at the University of Victoria Biology Department. It was originally named the Marine Environmental Science Collections (MESC), but was expanded in 2002 to include other ecosystems. The MESC now refers to the collection of rare and difficult to obtain limited distribution documents produced by governments and industrial agencies, collected by Derek Ellis.
In the future, the Archives hopes that other scientists and agencies will donate their archives, and hence increase the value of the Archives to the world community of scholars and environmental practitioners.
The web site contains a description and inventory of each archival fonds or collection. An item can be retrieved by citing:
To obtain photocopies of items, a charge of 0.25 cents per page, plus postage and handling, will be required in advance of shipment. Payment can be made by Mastercard, Visa or money order.
The University of Victoria Archives acknowledges the generous financial support of Placer Dome, Vancouver, BC (1997-1998); and Island Copper Mine, Port Hardy, BC (2000).
The donations were used to establish the Archives by employing three students on Co-operative Education work terms: Nicole Skalinski (1997), Carissa Turner (1998), and Sandra Hardy (2000). Emrys Damon Miller designed and developed the original web site in 1997, then revised it in 2002. The Archives extends thanks to Nicole, Carissa, Sandra and Emrys for their dedicated and professional work.
This website strictly adheres to W3C compliant HTML and CSS. It also adheres to the W3C WAI accessibility guidelines, and can be accessed with text-only browsers, or with talking web browsers for the visually impaired (though it should be warned that some pages are very long). All the content on the site is scalable, using the text-zoom feature of most web browsers.
This site was last updated in June 2007.
For further information about donations, access, reference or photocopying, please contact:
Lara Wilson, University Archivist
The Annat Point mill in the Scottish highlands in 1983. The outfall is to the left.