. . . and is now part of http://www.abbreviations.com, which is worth a look in its own regard. It aims to be the “largest human-edited abbreviations directory of the web.” Where an abbreviation has more than one source, the results display with the “most common” at the top. Have a look at MM, for example.

Rare Books and Special Collections (RBSC) at UBC Library’s Irving K. Barber Learning Centre (IKBLC) will be closed from the 3rd of August until the 4th of September 2007. The closure is required to allow the joining of the Phase I and Phase II buildings of the IKBLC to take place. A long temporary wall must be removed and the lighting, suspended ceiling, piping, data, and electrical systems of the two phases joined. RBSC staff will occupy temporary quarters in room 2:27 of the IKBLC in August.
There will be reduced telephone and computing capacity in the temporary space. Staff will be working to clear processing backlogs but will not be able to provide public service since the reading room of RBSC will be at the centre of the construction. The RBSC reading room will reopen on September 5.
The Library regrets any inconvenience this closure may cause. According to the present construction schedule Rare Books and Special Collections will take possession of its final and much expanded reading room at the end of November 2007.

This is old news, but those of who are beginning to play with Second Life, or are interested in finding out how libraries are using it, may find it interesting to visit the Library of Congress site in Second Life
Tara.

Hello all,
Some of you may already be aware of this, but I just found out that a number of photo archive collections from the Library of Congress is available on Flickr. To find these, go to www.flickr.com and type “library of congress” in the search box. Neat!
Tara

This map puts things into an interesting perspective.
If you’re a bit foggy about which state is which (Delaware?) here’s a topographical map of the US.
Scroll down strangemaps blog: it’s worth a look.

A researcher for a film company needed pictures of people (Nixon, Kissinger, Haldeman, McLaughlin, Liebowitz, Zedong, etc.) as they appeared in 1985 (for casting purposes). Tara showed me a brilliant site – Corbis – that you can search by name, and limit to very specific date ranges. He was thrilled to find pictures of most of the people there, and could save the pictures and easily email them to the casting agent.

Hello all,
I will be teaching a series of Back To Basics sessions in the next three months and thought I would post the schedule here as there have been a few questions at the desk regarding such sessions.
I will also be doing research skills workshops for graduate students in the late summer and early fall with dates to be announced soon.
Tara

The ENGL 112 class taught by Sarah Parry will be working on a research essay assignment with a Works Cited. Students are being asked to provide 5 peer-reviewed scholarly sources that are relevant to a topic based on pre-assigned readings. Materials from the bibliographies of assigned readings are not accepted. A copy of the assignment can be found in the Course Assignments binder at the Reference Desk.
Topic A: Ethnic Studies
Possible search terms: Try the following keyword search:
Academic Search Premier or Sociological Abstracts: (immigrant women or women immigrants) and (labour market or employment) plus whatever occupation or country the students have chosen to research. “Ethnic economy” can be used with some success.
NB: Limit to Peer-Reviewed Sources
Contemporary Women’s Issues: keyword (immigrant) and select Workplace from the Subject Area drop down menu. *You can also select Geographic region if the student has selected a national context.
Topic B: Adolescent Studies
In Academic Search Premier, AnthroSource, Sociological Abstracts: A useful search is friendship and (school or education) and sociability or a search with “friendship” “adolescence” and “education” or “high school”. The instructor has suggested that students may want to research “esl” and “friendship” and read professional ESL journals. UBC holds a few ESL journals.

Topic C: Labour Studies

Academic Search Premier, Web of Science
Suggested searches: “trade unions and (globalization or coalitions)” or “union and minorities” or “unions and environmentalism” depending on the students’ topic of choice.
NB: The instructor has indicated that some students may choose to look at teachers/nurses and unions, although this is a much harder topic. She has suggested that students may need to contact her for recommended sources.
Topic D: Gender Studies
Academic Search Premier, Sociological Abstracts, Contemporary Women’s Issues:
Useful keywords are “gender, language, discourse studies” and whatever profession students are investigating such as “law, medicine, broadcasting (specify tv, radio, etc.) The term ‘sociolinguistics’ is also be a useful search term.

Heads up – a number of Poli Sci students have been coming by the desk looking for books and articles on the topic of declining youth voter turnout in Canada.
The subject heading Voting – Canada reveals 56 titles, including the popular “Are young Canadians becoming political dropouts? : a comparative perspective” by Henry Milner. The Koerner copy is signed out, but fortunately this policy document is also freely available online..
The Elections Canada website Youth section has a link to publications and reports on youth voter turnout.
For scholarly articles, both Academic Search Premier and International Political Science Abstracts turned up some good results.
Update:
Patrick has turned up a great survey from StatsCan:

Canadian Journalists for Free Expression (CJFE) receives award for the Advancement of Intellectual Freedom in Canada