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About KnowBC
About KnowBC
KnowBC was launched in 2001 as the online edition of Harbour Publishing’s Encyclopedia of British Columbia. The encyclopedia remains the cornerstone of KnowBC, but there is much more on the site today.
This new version of KnowBC represents a comprehensive redevelopment that will consolidate KnowBC’s standing as British Columbia’s leading general reference site. The original hard-coded pages were replaced by a state-of-the-art Content Management System (CMS) that will allow enhancements and additions to occur more readily than in the past.
The hardcover version of the Encyclopedia of BC (EBC) finally went out of print after selling 30,000 copies, but it continues to be updated and expanded in this online version. Editor Daniel Francis still combs through the newspapers every morning looking at deaths, mergers, election results, name changes and other developments that affect existing EBC entries. In addition we have added a series of major Pacific Northwest resources to the KnowBC portal, beginning with two of Harbour Publishing’s most significant publications of the last decade, Marine Life of the Pacific Northwest: A Photographic Encyclopedia of Invertebrates, Seaweeds and Selected Fishes, and The Encyclopedia of Raincoast Place Names. (These two massive enhancements will be implemented in stages.) We’ve also added the full text of Raincoast Chronicles 20: Lilies and Fireweed: Frontier Women of British Columbia. Far West: The Story of British Columbia, a provincial history for younger readers, has been carried over from the earlier version. Another lively new feature of the reborn KnowBC site is the KnowBC Blog, where, among other things, Daniel Francis will be posting installments of a major new historical work, Where Mountains Meet the Sea: The History of Coastal BC. The reconfigured site also includes new user interface pages targeted at teachers and student users and public and academic library users. Finally, the new website has a brand new design with improved navigation pages and functionality to better serve our readers.
“This has been a major redevelopment of the KnowBC website. Our aim is to make KnowBC the main vehicle for delivering Harbour’s continually expanding library of BC reference and history texts online. We intend this site to be a must-have product for every BC school, library and public institution.”
— Howard White, publisher