About UBC Library’s Digital Colouring Books
Experience history at the tip of your pencil crayons! UBC Library’s Digital Colouring Books aim to inspire creativity and spark curiosity through the art found in our Rare Books and Special Collections. We are joining the New York Academy of Medicine Library and others to offer this unique way to engage with library content.
Featured Book
Mythical Creatures
The William C. Gibson History of Medicine and Science Collection is named in honour of Dr. William Carleton Gibson (1913-2009). After joining UBC’s Faculty of Medicine in 1950, Dr. Gibson served as Professor and Head of the History of Medicine and Science Department. During this time, he spearheaded the construction of UBC’s Woodward Biomedical Library and the acquisition of antiquarian books for its Charles Woodward Memorial Room. Strong in early zoology texts, the collection includes Polish naturalist and physician Jan Jonston’s richly illustrated seventeenth-century texts on animals.
The Download Library
Get free copies of all our previously released digital colouring books, available as PDF files.
Kelmscott Chaucer
Digital Colouring Book
Released April 2018
Call No: PR1850 1896
Mythical Creatures
Digital Colouring Book
Released February 2019
W C. Gibson Collection
What’s next?
Check back for more!
Digitizing the Kelmscott Chaucer
Each digitization project presents its own challenges. Digitizing the Kelmscott Chaucer was uniquely challenging because the book is tightly bound and has small gutters (the blank spaces surrounding a book’s type area). When digitizing, the material itself always comes first so we made the decision not to use our normal bound-book scanner. Instead we used a scanner with a top-notch digital camera back to capture the intricate detailing the Chaucer is known for.
Share your colours
Show off your work! Post your finished pages on Instagram with the hashtag #ColourOurCollectionsUBC
