RBSC mentioned on CBC’s Windsor Morning

More great press on our papyri from Roman-age Egypt! Professor Max Nelson, who earned his Ph.D. at UBC and is now an Associate Professor at the University of Windsor, was interviewed on the CBC program Windsor Morning about the papyri. Professor Nelson is currently collaborating on an article about the papyri with UBC’s own Professor […]

RBSC on Global News

Global News watchers may have been pleasantly surprised to see our own Katherine Kalsbeek, acting head of Rare Books and Special Collections, on T.V. yesterday evening. Two pieces of papyri dating back to Roman-age Egypt about 1,800 years ago that had previously been uncatalogued have now been rediscovered by UBC scholars, and Global News was […]

RBSC remembers Leonard Guy McCann

This past spring, Rare Books and Special Collections at UBC Library lost a dear friend, and Vancouver’s museum, historical, and archival communities lost a leader. Leonard Guy McCann, who was curator of the Vancouver Maritime Museum for 45 years, and a contributor to our own collections, passed away in late March at the age of […]

New exhibition: Settling the Language

We’re very excited to welcome a new exhibition to Rare Books and Special Collections! The exhibit, Settling the Language: Dictionaries and Language Change, 1490 to Today, is being mounted in support of the Dictionary Society of North America and Studies in the History of English Language conferences being held at UBC from June 5 to […]

The Changing Written Word

In honour of our new exhibition, Papal Parchments and Blackletter Books, here’s a lesson on the history of the written word and why the text you’re reading now looks the way it does. Thanks so much to the exhibition’s curator, Robert Makinson, for this fascinating look back. The Changing Written Word The alphabet used by […]

More medieval fun (online)

We’re pretty proud of our library and archival school here at UBC. Rare Books and Special Collections benefits greatly from the talented students that take on co-ops, work learn positions, and special projects here. Our new exhibition, Papal Parchments and Blackletter Books, was curated by current library student, Robert Makinson, and a fellow student (and a […]