UBC Vancouver library locations will be closed on Wednesday, January 15, 2020 due to winter weather conditions.

The Irving K. Barber Learning Centre building will remain open, however, service points will be closed.

Please refer to UBC.ca for additional updates.

UBC Library’s Irving K. Barber Learning Centre will be closed on Thursday, January 9, 2020. Due to a water leak, the heating system has been turned off. No library materials have been damaged or are in danger.

Update:

The building is scheduled to re-open on Friday, January 10 at 6 a.m. for regular operating hours.

The following classrooms will be closed for cleanup work January 9 – 12 inclusive:

Closed: Lecture theatre 182. Rooms 155, 156, 157, 158, 185, 192, 193 and 194.

Room 191 and the lecture theatre lobby flooring will require restoration work beyond January 12.

We apologize for any inconvenience.

UBC Library hosts exhibit honouring Vancouver icon John Fluevog. The exhibit, located in the David Lam Management Research Library and Level 2 of the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre runs until the end of the year.

The exhibit, that runs October 10 to November 15 on the Level 2 foyer of IKBLC, celebrates Jim Wong-Chu, a well-known Asian-Canadian historian, editor, author, and poet.

We’re getting ready to kick off the 10th annual UBC Library United Way Spelling Bee on Thursday, October 17.

UBC faculty, staff and students are invited to create a team of 4-10 people and compete for the win in this annual cross-campus event to raise awareness for the United Way.

• Date: Thursday, October 17
• Time: 12:30 p.m. – 1:30 p.m.
• Location: 4th floor Golden Jubilee Room, Irving K. Barber Learning Centre (1961 East Mall, Vancouver, B.C.)

To register your team, fill out the online form by Thursday, October 10th.  Registration is on a first come, first served basis, so don’t delay!

Download the 2019 Spelling Bee Poster. For more information, please contact library.adminsupport@ubc.ca.

The Wallace B. Chung and Madeline H. Chung Collection exhibition at Rare Books and Special Collections has welcomed its 10,000th visitor!

The Lillooet Room, part of the Chapman Learning Commons in Irving K. Barber Learning Centre, has been renamed the Antonio and Marissa Peña Learning and Events Room.

UBC Library has partnered with local non-profit 2 Paycheques Away to bring an exceptional and striking photography exhibit to two library locations.

This summer, students may see some unfamiliar faces on campus, and deliberately so. UBC Library has partnered with local non-profit 2 Paycheques Away.. to bring an exceptional and striking photography exhibit to two library locations. The exhibit aims to bring the campus and Vancouver communities a little closer together and facilitates portrayals of spirited and resilient individuals from Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside (DTES), by displaying their portraits and stories as shared during their visit to the barber.

2 Paycheques Away.. is the brainchild of Vancouver-based barber and musician Alysha Osborne. In her early teens, Osborne learned that her stepmother had run away from home and ended up in Vancouver in her early twenties, addicted to heroin and working as a prostitute in Vancouver’s DTES. Osborne struggled to reconcile how someone she admired so much and who was a beloved family member, mentor, and parent had lived that life. “I came to realize that my stepmother and I were not that different, and that I, with just a little worse luck, could have landed in the same spot,” she explains.

Giving back to the community

Osborne was working in Gastown and had been wanting to give back to the DTES community for some time, but was unsure how she could contribute in a meaningful way. “The idea for 2 Paycheques Away.. came to me during a trip to the North American Hair Awards. I was watching all these pictures going up on the screen and I put two and two together and had an epiphany/meltdown. I turned to my husband and said: ‘I know exactly what I want to do’.”

When Osborne returned to Vancouver, she reached out to portrait photographer Mihailo Subotic, whom she met working in the same building, about the idea. “I explained to Mihailo that I wanted the pictures to be real with no special lighting or crazy editing so you could just really see the people. He showed me the work of a couple of photographers he knew that used a similar style and understood exactly what I was looking for.”

Rebuilding bridges and relationships

The two began capturing community members during their trips to the barber and learning more about their individual stories — stories of people like Roberto who lost his sense of smell when a grenade detonated near him during his home country of El Salvador’s civil war and moved to Vancouver in 1983 or Angie, from Six Nations, Ontario who moved to Vancouver to join two of her brothers and try something new.

The project was eventually developed into a book where it caught the attention of a friend of Subotic, Melany Lund, who also happened to be a circulation assistant at UBC Library. “My friend’s ears perked up when I told her about this project,” he says, “She came to the book launch and suggested we get in touch with Rare Books and Special Collections because it was so unique.”

Bringing 2 Paycheques Away.. to campus

The library acquired a copy of the book for the university’s rare books collection, but saw an opportunity to do more. Inspired by the UBC Learning Exchange’s two-way learning model that ensures knowledge also flows from the community back into the university, Katherine Kalsbeek, Head of Rare Books and Special Collections and Aleteia Greenwood, Head of the Woodward Library proposed an exhibition of photographs and stories in UBC Library spaces. Their backgrounds and experiences informed their interest in using UBC spaces as a platform to open minds and shift perspectives. “Hosting this exhibition on campus allows these stories to reach a broader audience and reach people who might not see them otherwise,” says Greenwood, “The Library is committed to meaningful engagement and knowledge exchange with the community.”

Osborne and Subotic are just as thrilled to bring their work to UBC, “Young minds change the world and we want them to see these photos and know these people,” says Osborne.

Osborne and Subotic are grateful for the awareness that working on the project has brought them and hope that the exhibit helps to broaden that awareness. “We’ve learned so much about the issues and problems that the DTES community and neighbourhood is facing,” says Osborne, “We hope this exhibit will help raise that kind of awareness on campus.”

 

The exhibit will run in the Woodward Library and Ike’s Café in the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre until the end of 2019 and will move downtown to the UBC Learning Exchange in early 2020.

View the 2 Paycheques Away.. book in the library’s collection.
Copies of the book are also available for purchase at the UBC Bookstore.

In honour of the 60th anniversary of the Library’s acquisition of the Puban Collection, Rare Books and Special Collections will be hosting bi-weekly tours highlighting items from the Puban Collection throughout the summer, from July 9 to August 20.