Welcome to the City of Vancouver Archives' database, the system for searching descriptions of the Archives’ holdings. You can view records by visiting the Archives in person; digitized or born-digital material, if available, may be viewed and downloaded directly from the database. Start your search from the search bar above or check out the resources below:
• What’s in our holdings
• Research guides
• Tips for searching the database
• Tips for searching for digital photographs, audio, movies or text
Go to the Archives web site.
Our blog, AuthentiCity, is a great way to find out about what staff is up to at the Archives and announcements on newly available or newly digitized records.
Read about the database project and our upgrades over the years.
Retrieval Notice
A small portion of our holdings are held at a secondary satellite site. While most records are housed on-site at the Archives, requests for material at the satellite location will take additional time to retrieve. Archives staff will advise researchers and work with them to make arrangements. Researchers are welcome to contact us in advance to confirm any record requests. We apologize for any inconvenience.
DISCLAIMER
The Archives strives to ensure that the information about our archival holdings is as accurate and reliable as possible. Despite this, we cannot and do not guarantee that the information present on our website or in our online database searcharchives.vancouver.ca is always accurate or current. The Archives and City of Vancouver make no warranties, express or implied, as to the fitness of the information for any purpose or to results obtained by individuals using the information, and are not responsible for any action taken in reliance on the information obtained by you or used by you from the Site.
Special Notice: Amendments to the Canada Copyright Act in 2020 extended the term of copyright for several categories of works. As such, copyright expiration dates present in descriptions in our online database may not be accurate. This particularly affects moving images (cinematographic works), sound recordings, and some unattributed works (i.e. works with anonymous/pseudonymous authorship) that were not in the public domain prior to 2021.
Researchers intending to use works from the Archives holdings in ways that may not be considered fair dealing are advised to perform their own analysis of the copyright status of any works they intended to use to determine if their use may constitute a copyright infringement.