Collections

Featured place: Victoria

We have been featuring resources from Rare Books and Special Collections that relate to the place names used in the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre as room names. Sometimes we find it challenging to find a related resource; sometimes the challenge is in narrowing down our research! Such is the case with Victoria. Victoria B.C., […]

Comic book database trial

Those who have used Rare Books and Special Collections comic book collections may be interested in trying out a new database that UBC Library is trialing: Underground and independent comics, comix and graphic novels is “the first ever scholarly, primary source database focusing on adult comic books and graphic novels. Beginning with the first underground […]

Featured place: Kitimat

  In our ongoing series of blog posts featuring the B.C. places used in the Irving K. Barber Centre room names, this week we will take a look at Kitimat. Kitimat was established as a company town in the truest sense. It was established when the Aluminum Company of Canada (Alcan) built a hydroelectric dam […]

Featured place: Nicola River

As previously mentioned in our blog posts on British Columbia place names, many rooms in the Irving K Barber Learning Centre are named after rivers in British Columbia. This week, we are exploring the history of the Nicola River, after which room 322, a group study room, is named after. According to BC Geographical Names […]

Featured place: McBride

In this installation of our blog series exploring B.C. places from the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre rooms, we will explore the village of McBride, or in this case, its namesake. McBride is located in the Cariboo, between Prince George and Valmount, very close to the Albertan border.  Settled during the construction of the Grand […]

Featured place: Bralorne

The Bralorne Reading Room (room 490 in the School of Library, Archival, and Information Studies, Irving K Barber Learning Centre) is named after the town of Bralorne, a gold mining community in the Bridge River District, 125 kilometers west of the town of Lillooet. In 1897, three gold prospectors staked claims at what became the […]

Happy birthday, Louis Daguerre!

If you have been to Google today, it may have come to your attention that today is the 224th anniversary of the birth of Louis Daguerre, inventor of the first permanent photographic process, called a daguerreotype.  Daguerreotypes were used from around 1839 to 1860, and differ in many ways from later photographic types: the process […]

Remembrance Day closure

A reminder that except for UBC Okanagan Library, all other UBC Library branches, including Rare Books and Special Collections, University Archives and the Chung Collection will be closed for Remembrance Day on Friday November 11. The photograph above, from the Chung Collection, shows the C.P.R. steamship the R.M.S. Empress of Russia leaving Vancouver when she […]

Updated archives: John Keenlyside Legal Research Collection

We are pleased to announce that additional material is now available in the John Keenlyside Legal Research Collection. This collection is consists of primary documents related to the legal history in British Columbia, and is particularly strong in colonial documents. The most recent addition to this collection contains three different series of documents: Bankruptcy cases: […]