Island writer Kathy Birt donates collection to UPEI Robertson Library

UPEI students and researchers wanting to learn more about the development of Island farming, forestry, fisheries, and aquaculture in the late 1900s and into the 21st century, will soon find a great new resource available to them at the University's Robertson Library.

Thanks to a generous donor, Island writer Kathy Birt has donated her sizeable collection of periodical publications and photographs, reflecting her 25-year freelance journalism career, to the Library's PEI collection. In addition to several hundred articles, and more than 1,000 photographs documenting the Island's farms, forests, and fisheries-which appeared in a range of regional, North American, and UK periodicals-the collection also contains clippings from Birt's journalism in the 1970s and 1980s, when, writing as Kathy Jorgensen, she served as Fashion and Lifestyles Editor at The Guardian. She also contributed a Cornwall 'Neighborhood News' column to The Evening Patriot.

'We're very pleased to be adding these materials to our Prince Edward Island Collection,' said University archivist and Special Collections' librarian Simon Lloyd. 'Kathy's freelance writing and photography provide a really good picture of how PEI's farming, fishery, and forestry were evolving around the turn of the millennium.'

Lloyd noted that the PEI Collection has long worked to track periodical writing about Island topics through its PEI Periodical Articles Database (PEI PAD), so Birt's donation is a nice complement to that effort.

Birt is happy to be sharing her materials with the PEI Collection's users. 'As markets for my Island stories grew, so did my collection of magazines and newspapers with those stories filling the pages,' she said. 'I often wondered what I would do with all of them as I grew older. Thanks to a suggestion from Janna Toms with the Provincial Archives, I have found a permanent home for my works.'

More about Kathy Birt:
Kathy Birt is a self-published author and a graduate of Holland College's Journalism program, Charlottetown Centre, class of 1982. She worked with both The Guardian and CHTN Radio 1982-1992. Her freelance writing career spanned 25 years. During the 1990's to the end of 2010, she wrote about the Island's agriculture, fisheries and forestry industries. Her stories sold to publications across Canada, the US, and in the UK. Birt's next self-published book, her sixth, will be launched in the spring of 2015, and will focus on several hot-button topics in Island politics. She is currently working on her memoirs.