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CBC
05-05-2025
- General
- CBC
How to digitize your most important documents — without getting overwhelmed
With wildfires, floods and other emergencies all too common of late, it's worth asking, if you had to leave your home in a hurry, would your important documents be easy to grab and take with you? Canada's Emergency Preparedness Guide recommends making copies of important documents — like birth and marriage certificates, passports, licences, wills, land deeds and insurance paperwork — and keeping them in a safe place both inside and outside of your home. You could put them in a safety deposit box or give them to friends or family who live out of town. That way, you have a backup in case the originals are destroyed, damaged or have to be left behind. And in addition to having physical copies, you may want to make digital versions as they can be easier to access in an emergency. But let's face it, organizing and scanning all those papers can feel overwhelming, and it's tempting to put it off. To help you get started, we asked archivist June Chow and digitization expert Jeff Marceil for tips on everything from image size to naming your files, so you can finally get organized and rest easy, knowing you're prepared. Use a scanner While your phone camera and document-scanning apps may be convenient, both experts strongly recommend using a scanner for best results. A photo of a document is better than nothing, but could be missing important details due to resolution, tone or hue, and might not be sufficient for government bodies like the Canada Revenue Agency. Chow, an archivist with the Toronto Reference Library, says a flatbed scanner is a good investment, but you may be able to use one for free at a public library. You can specify the resolution, file type and other details for each document, and you won't have to worry about lighting issues like you would when you're taking a photo. Of course, if you're short on time or have boxes of documents or photo prints you want scanned, there are businesses that can do this quickly and accurately for a fee. Think about format and resolution The first step is to determine if what you're digitizing is text or images — and if it's worth the time and effort to scan, store and manage the files. "Don't try to digitize everything just because the technology exists and is available," Chow said. Marceil — a project manager at Micro Com Systems, which specializes in document scanning and data capture for businesses in B.C. — suggests scanning documents at 300 DPI (dots per inch), and photos at 600 DPI. "As far as legibility [for documents], if you go higher, you're just creating [a] larger file size," he said. "It gets a little bit better, but not enough to justify the higher file size." Also, scanning your documents in black and white and saving the files as a PDF (recommended for most documents) or a TIFF using Group 4 compression will keep the original image data intact while often taking up less space on your hard drive. "A lot of times people scan things in colour, and it's just then you're using JPEG compression, and it's not as good," Marceil said. "[Group 4 compression] is also considered a lossless compression, which means … when you [open the file], there's no loss of the image quality." Of course, it all depends on what you're using the digital files for. "When we do digitization for preservation, it's done at high resolution [and] often results in TIFF file formats and very big files," Chow said. But if you want a file that is quick to open and easy to share, consider saving your images as JPEGs, which are smaller and suitable for viewing on a screen. Finally, if you're scanning a document that's several pages long, Marceil suggests creating a multi-page PDF rather than scanning each page individually. "Even the cheapie big-box-store scanners, they've got software that'll allow you to create a multi-page … file," he said. Some scanning software uses optical character recognition (OCR) to make printed documents searchable — handy when you need to find a specific receipt. Use logical naming conventions "However you are searching for your documents now — whether it's alphabetical order or numerical order or by subject or something like that — in the digital world, you should save things pretty much the same way," Marceil said. "Because when you end up with thousands of files or thousands of documents, you want to name them something logical so that you'll be able to find them later." For example, if you're digitizing personal documents for your family, the names of the files for each person could start with their first name so that everything is automatically grouped together in the folder. Or for all paperwork related to a specific property, the file names could start with the address or street name. Ideally, you want to make a few copies of each file and store them in different places and on different platforms. "It's not an issue of storing files on the cloud versus your computer hard drive versus a CD — it's actually all of them," Chow said. "It's an and-and-and relationship." Just be sure to use encrypted folders and require a password for sensitive documents. Chow says creating a digital copy protects valuable records and documents against loss or damage. But remember to update your digital records as your physical documents expire or are replaced.
Hamilton Spectator
04-05-2025
- Business
- Hamilton Spectator
‘It tells you about another life': Inside a Toronto bookstore that does more than sell books
A man lugged two bags full of books to drop to the donation box outside. Inside, a woman snapped up marked-down novels while a father and his two kids were excitedly picking out a few reads. These are typical scenes at Bookends South, a small used bookstore tucked in a corner of the Toronto Reference Library. Entirely volunteer-run, Bookends has quietly served readers and raised funds for public library programs for 25 years. Operated by the registered charity Friends of the Toronto Public Library South Chapter, the store offers gently used books, CDs, DVDs, and vinyl for as little as 25 cents. And everything — from pricing books to manning the cash box — is powered by volunteers like Frank Velikonja, who's been with Bookends for 20 years. When Velikonja arrives for his nine-hour shift, he restocks shelves, sorts through donations, and handles managerial tasks like updating schedules and supporting other volunteers. As the longest-serving volunteer at Bookends South, he's also served as president of the Friends of the Toronto Public Library for several years. 'It's always been this sense of love of operating a bookstore, of providing quality materials and being around other people who love books,' Velikonja, 64, said, about his decades of volunteering. 'The camaraderie is extraordinary, and it's an especially great and wonderful environment.' Ken Popert, a retired volunteer, discovered Bookends after browsing the Toronto Public Library website. Now, he volunteers one shift per week, sorting through thousands of donated items the store receives from the public, withdrawn books from the library, and even publishers with overstock. Popert inspects the books' condition, organizes them by subject, and gets them ready for the shelves. Most books are priced at $1, but rare and limited-edition titles are marked with blue dot stickers and priced higher. Popert finds his work particularly interesting, noting that sorting books offers 'a window into the lives of strangers' — such as when he finds money used as bookmarks, which he says happens often. For particularly rare finds, Bookends hosts a major treasure sale every two years at the library's Beeton Hall. Items are sold for just 25 per cent of their market value, raising money for the organization. The funds raised through Bookends help support various Toronto Public Library programs, including literacy and literary programs at the Toronto Reference Library, and fully funding the Elementary School Outreach Program for children. Volunteer Amanda Cheung explained that the store is always looking for new volunteers. While volunteers assist with customer service and inventory management, there is an especially high need for help with sorting donations and pricing books before they make it to the shelves. Volunteers are also needed to organize curated book sales for special events at the library, as well as to fill managerial and leadership roles. Antoinette Fracassi, who has been volunteering at Bookends for three years, works one shift every two weeks. Her tasks include operating the cash register, tidying shelves, assisting customers, and checking out purchases. She first discovered the store while wandering through the library, and with 15 years of experience working in a bookstore, she felt right at home. Now retired and living nearby, Fracassi also volunteers at the University of Toronto's John M. Kelly Library, making Bookends a perfect fit. Fracassi has had many memorable moments volunteering, including a couple who visited the store to purchase 'a few hundred dollars worth of books' for a charity they worked with in Jamaica. They were donating the books to a resource centre there. Volunteering, she says, 'keeps you going.' 'You get this richness when you volunteer because of the people that you meet and the people that you talk to. And it's beautiful, the stories that you hear — it tells you about another life that you've not lived.' As part of the Star's ongoing Toronto the Better initiative, this year we'll highlight the people and organizations making a difference in the GTA and share volunteering opportunities that can inspire real change. Know of a person or group deserving of the spotlight? Email torontothebetter@
CBC
05-04-2025
- Entertainment
- CBC
Playwright Anusree Roy on what history books leave out about the 1947 Partition of India
When Anusree Roy was commissioned to write a large-scale play for Nightwood Theatre just over a decade ago, she turned to prayer for ideas. "I had this vision of a lineup of women," Roy says in an interview with Q 's Tom Power. "Every day I would sit down and I would just write what I saw, and I heard and I visualized and I prayed. And then a story emerged, and it was women in a speeding truck." Though she wasn't quite sure what this meant at first, she eventually settled on writing a story revolving around the Partition of India in 1947, when the country was divided by the British government into what are now known as India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, causing one of the largest mass migrations in history. Partition was the breaking point of religious tension between Muslims and Hindus that had been simmering for decades due to policies implemented by the British government to keep communities divided. Roy's play Trident Moon centres this conflict, following three Muslim women who have been abducted by three Hindu women, all of them trapped in the back of a truck making its way to the new Hindu-only India. As others join them on board, it becomes a tense race against time as they cross the now-divided country to reach their destination. There's no post-trauma. We're inside the trauma. - Anusree Roy Going into writing the play, Roy didn't know very much about the details of Partition other than a few stories she had picked up from her family. She began her research at the Toronto Reference Library, but quickly found that each book said exactly the same thing: Hindus and Muslims hated each other. She decided to look into oral stories instead — it turns out people's stances weren't as cut-and-dried as the history books made them out to be. "It would go like this: they would go, 'We hate Hindus, [but] this one Hindu neighbour saved my life,'" Roy says. "Or, 'The Muslims, don't trust them. Don't trust a Muslim. Except the shopkeeper allowed me to hide and he was a good Muslim brother to me. He was a Muslim brother to me, and I'll die for him.'" Trident Moon manages to navigate the grey area of these relationships without actually focusing on emotion. In the manuscript for the play, Roy indicated that monologues should be delivered without any sentiment. The writing isn't intended to reflect on Partition or explore its living legacy; her characters are solely living in that moment, since there's no time for feelings when they're just trying to make it out alive. WATCH | Official trailer for Trident Moon: "When my grandmother used to tell me stories, she never talked about how she was feeling inside of what was happening — she just talked about wanting to survive," Roy says. "The survival is happening inside that truck. We're going to feel later. There's no post-trauma. We're inside the trauma." Now living in Los Angeles, Roy was one of more than 100,000 people forced to evacuate their homes due to recent wildfires, which has given her a new perspective on the play since she first wrote it. Though it doesn't compare to Partition, she says the experience did make her reflect on how terrifying it can feel to leave everything you know behind. Separated from her husband and knowing the fires were just minutes away, Roy forgot her medication, her wedding gold and other important possessions. "A taste it left in my mouth was that overnight fleeing, with the only thing you're wearing or whatever you can shove in a suitcase, is nauseating. I never want to experience that again." There are other aspects of the play that Roy sees as being relevant in present-day society, like how it's up to future generations to keep these stories alive, so history is not repeated. "I can see this play actually happening in the future," she tells Power. "These things happening to women like this, and having to flee … that's actually not a very shocking reality. None of my grandparents are here anymore. My parents hold on to their memory, but after that, it's just up to us, what we tell, what we do with these stories." Roy wrote and stars in Trident Moon, which runs until March 30 at Crow's Theatre in Toronto, and then from April 2 to 12 at the National Arts Centre in Ottawa.
