What Qiniruk Is
Qiniruk gathers Nunavut's digitized heritage materials, dispersed across archives, collections, and the wider web, into a visual, place-based interface.
Rather than acting as a single archive, it works as a discovery layer: a visual way into dispersed collections that are often difficult to navigate when approached one institution at a time.
The platform is designed to connect image records, place-based exploration, and supporting documents, articles, films, and archival sources in one navigable environment, serving as both a research tool and a guide.
You can stay within Qiniruk, or you can branch outward into source collections and the wider web. You may find yourself with many, many, many tabs open to new and revealing materials.
Encounters is a source-cited chronology of documented outsider arrivals in the land that is today Nunavut, from Helluland to Land Claims. The live voyage is the Cruise of the Neptune, 1903–04.
How It Works
Images remain hosted by the source institution or source website. Qiniruk helps users discover those materials and move back out to the original collection record or archive page.
Only a small number of public-domain images are served directly through the project. Qiniruk helps you find it at the host institution or source site.
For image use, permissions, or reproduction, please contact the holding institution directly. Qiniruk functions as a switchboard rather than a re-hosting platform.
Source details and collection-level origins are listed in the companion Sources modal.
Status
This is a beta version and will continue to evolve. The platform, source coverage, interface, and explanatory materials are still being expanded and refined.
Some records may contain inaccuracies, omissions, or inconsistencies inherited from source metadata, digitization workflows, OCR, or data migration between systems.
Credits & Support
Qiniruk is designed, assembled, and maintained by Lowerbase Labs on the shores of Kojessee Inlet at the foot of Frobisher Bay, Iqaluit.
The cloth photo panel adapts “Old Cloth with Wind” by Sabo Sugi (MIT License).
The Node Graph photo ring adapts “CSS 3D Rotating Image Gallery” by Nasir Khan (MIT License).
Created with support from the Government of Nunavut Community Services, Community Tourism and Cultural Industries Program.
