What is the Sagittarius Project? The Sagittarius Project is an initiative of researchers at York University’s Faculty of Liberal Arts and Professional Studies to digitize literary resources for teaching and learning for use by Canadian high schools.

The first phase involves digitizing plays by George Bernard Shaw being performed at the Shaw Festival at Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario, Canada, plus numerous scholarly articles and background materials. The second phase sees the digitizing of the works of African Canadian writers, in addition to more plays by Shaw.

How can students benefit? Students and teachers will be able to access annotated texts and resources for the G. B. Shaw plays directly from their classrooms, complete with the production details, contextual documents, reference materials by world-renowned Shaw scholars, quizzes and activities, a search engine, and study guides tailored to the Ontario school curriculum.

By increasing the number of digitized resources at students’ fingertips, the project aims to bring Shaw alive in the imaginations of students. “This project introduces a whole new dimension for students, teachers and researchers, especially in access to and dissemination of research materials.” – Professor Kelly Thomson, York University’s Faculty of Liberal Arts and Professional Studies and Chair of the Advisory Board of the Sagittarius Project.

Who can access the digitized resources? The Shaw resources are available exclusively to schools that are connected to the ORION research and education network – that’s approximately 800,000 students in 24 school boards across Ontario. Check if your board is connected.

Teachers looking to obtain information on how to connect their school to the network can write to Ali Abbas Mehboob Hirji at ali.hirji@orion.on.ca. Several thousand more students in schools across the country connected through CANARIE, Canada’s advanced research and education network backbone, may also access the digitized Shaw resources.