Collections

The Columbia Basin Institute of Regional History has as its mandate the goal of stimulating research in the human and natural history of the Columbia Basin. To that end, working with partners in the far-flung reaches of the Columbia and Kootenay River drainages, we have amassed a resource which assists researchers and general inquirers at every level.

• the Columbia Basin Image Bank is a partnership between the Columbia Basin Institute and a wide number of individuals and societies
• the Institute continues to interview and record residents of the Columbia Basin, and intends to make segments available here as mp3 voice files
• the Institute continues to collect and digitize movie and video clips that portray events in the Columbia Basin
• the resource library is a small collection that continues to grow

All of the resources of the Columbia Basin Institute of Regional History are designed to be accessible by web access. The Institute is not a collector of real objects and does not have a tangible collection. We work with Columbia Basin individuals, museums and archives to create access to the digitized version of archival documents, photographs and, in some instances, small books.

The mission of the Columbia Basin Institute of Regional History is to make history interesting, public and accessible. We do not collect real objects, but arrange to create exact digital files of the objects others possess. We support all of the public and private collections that already exist, and work with those collectors to provide digital access to the resources in their collections.