This week’s blog post is a selection of dinner menus from the Chung Collection, which is held at UBC Library’s Rare Books and Special Collections. The Chung Collection contains many materials including travel pamphlets, itineraries and menus from the Canadian Pacific Railway Company, which was a large enterprise that dealt in railway and non-railway transportation and travel. These menus are from the commercial passenger trains, steamships and hotels and offer insight into the lavish fare that one could expect from these extravagant excursions.
Today in 1931, this beautiful art deco illustration was the cover of the “au revoir dinner menu” on the Empress of Japan. The menu features wine suggestions, dinner, salad and dessert offerings.
This dining car menu is from the Dominion train in 1936 and includes both set and a la carte menus. It features a beautiful photograph of Kicking Horse River on the cover.
This Meridian Day menu from the Empress of Britain features musical selections alongside the dinner menu. The cover of this menu features an illustration of the ship and a golden chariot being pulled by three white horses.
This menu is from the Empress of France and features a beautiful view of Castle Mountain from the Canadian Pacific Railway Line on the front page. The menu also features information about the mountain on the back page, including the reason for its renaming in 1946 from Castle Mountain to Mt. Eisenhower, the name which it held until 1979.
I hope you enjoyed seeing what passengers on Canadian Pacific trains and steamships were eating in the 1930’s-50’s.
We are thrilled to announce the latest addition to our library’s Japanese language collection – a selection of print journals dedicated to exploring the vibrant realm of Japanese pop culture, including anime, manga, and current films!
Founded in 1946, this monthly magazine has been at the forefront of Japanese serial publications devoted to American, European, and other films and TV shows as well as Japanese and Asian pop culture. The publication also includes Screen Plus, which focuses on Japanese cinema.
Newtype and Animage are both monthly magazines specialized in Japanese animation. Like Screen and Screen Plus, these magazines are glossy, visually rich publications that are beneficial to researchers of anime culture, and anyone who wants to delve into the rich world of Japanese anime.
Cyrus Qiu, a PhD Candidate and Sessional Lecturer at the UBC Asian Studies Department, is excited to have these journals available at the library. “[The two journals are] of interest to us (who do research about anime culture) as well as students of our manga/anime classes as well. Both of them present useful data and host influential cultural events,” says Qiu.
Find these magazines in the Journals section on the Lower Floor of the Asian Library. Want to find out how to find Japanese language anime and manga publications available at the branch? Check out the Anime & Manga Resources guide. Have more questions? Reach out to the Japanese Studies Librarian.
UBC faculty, staff and students can now access three new digital collections of newspapers. Explore digital archives for The Montreal Gazette, the Chinese Newspaper Collection, and Le Monde, purchased earlier this year and now available through the library catalogue.
The Montreal Gazette is the only English-language daily publication in Montreal, Quebec. This historical newspaper database will provide UBC researchers with the ability to easily search through full copies of all issues published between 1867 to 2010.
The Chinese Newspaper Collection is a database of over 20 historical English-language daily, weekly and monthly newspapers and magazines published in China between 1832 and 1953. Through articles, advertisements, editorials and cartoons, this database provides first-hand insights into the Chinese political and social landscape over 120 years.
Le Monde is one of most well-known daily newspapers published in France, with a history dating back to its founding at the request of General Charles de Gaulle. This archival database offers digitized issues of the French-language publication from 1944 to 2000.
“Requests for historical newspapers have increased over the past few years,” says Susan Paterson, Collections Coordinator at Koerner Library. “These primary sources are critical in many Humanities and Social Sciences areas.”
As part of an ongoing effort by the UBC Library Digitization Centre and cIRcle, UBC Library is making Indigenous language dictionaries more accessible by digitizing these works and making them available through UBC Open Collections.
“Within the province of British Columbia, there are 32 First Nations languages—eight are severely endangered and 22 are nearly extinct. Language revitalization projects and supports are crucial in redressing the impacts of colonialism, and allowing for communities to have cultural sovereignty,” says Kayla Lar-Son, Acting Head of Xwi7xwa Library. “Within the past few years the number of active Indigenous Language learners grows each year in British Columbia. Providing access to rare materials for community members can aid in the increase of language learners and adheres to the concept of Indigenous data sovereignty as we are now providing access to once hard-to-find materials.”
Down the winding trail to digitization
Published in 1996, the Thompson River Salish Dictionary was printed as part of a specialist series dedicated to the study of Indigenous languages of the Northwest. Encapsulating decades of scholarly field research and the cumulative knowledge and expertise of many members of the Nɬeʔkepmxcín community, this unique work is now widely accepted as the authoritative dictionary of the Thompson River Salish (nɬeʔkèpmxcín) language.
It is also extremely hard to find a physical copy.
Only two such copies are available at UBC: in the personal collection of faculty member Dr. Henry Davis, professor in the UBC Department of Linguistics, and in Xwi7xwa Library’s special collections, as a non-circulating copy.
Thompson River Salish Dictionary, by Laurence C. Thompson and M. Terry Thompson.
In 2022, Dr. Lisa Matthewson, professor in the UBC Department of Linguistics, selected Thompson River Salish (nɬeʔkèpmxcín) as the language of focus for the Field Methods class, but quickly ran into a logistical issue. Students in the course would be expected to work on original research projects focused on Thompson River Salish. But how would a whole class comfortably share one dictionary?
Dr. Murray Schellenberg, the Research and Archives Manager for the UBC Department of Linguistics, decided to reach out to Xwi7xwa Library to see if the department could borrow their book, keeping it safe in the department’s reading room for the duration of the course. Instead, UBC Library offered an alternative solution. If the dictionary could be digitized by the library and made publicly available online, then every student in the class would have access.
The only obstacle would be securing the rights. Both co-authors, Laurence C. Thompson and M. Terry Thompson, had passed away years prior, and the book didn’t have a traditional publisher. So Dr. Schellenberg went searching for answers. His first stop was Dr. Davis, owner of the other copy, and whose research for the past 20 years has focused on the critically endangered Indigenous languages of British Columbia.
“If anybody knew who had the rights to this [dictionary], Henry did,” recalls Dr. Schellenberg. The answer, according to Dr. Davis, was surprisingly simple. It was Tony.
Dr. Schellenberg learned that the Thompson River Salish Dictionary was published by Dr. Anthony (Tony) Mattina, a now retired faculty member at the University of Montana, as part of a series called the University of Montana Occasional Papers in Linguistics.
Dr. Davis offered to reach out. “And two days later, we had approval in principle to digitize the book,” says Dr. Schellenberg.
The UBC Library Digitization Centre began work on the dictionary soon afterward, and within three months the full volume was available on UBC Open Collections. While the Field Methods course had to make do with only one copy of the dictionary through the first term, by the second term, every student could access the book.
Finding a home in cIRcle
The Thompson River Salish Dictionary is one of several Indigenous language dictionaries now available through UBC Open Collections, including nɬeʔkèpmxcín : Thompson River Salish Speech, An English-Squamish Dictionary, and the Sechelt Dictionary.
Sechelt Dictionary, by Ronald C. Beaumont (Ronald Clayton).
With digitized materials like these, the Digitization Centre works closely with cIRcle to provide open access. As UBC’s institutional repository, cIRcle provides permanent Open Access to published and unpublished material created by the UBC community and its partners.
Traditionally, the materials sent to cIRcle are primarily theses, dissertations and research articles. “I think that’s what most comes to mind when people think of institutional repositories,” says Tara Stephens-Kyte, a Digital Repository Librarian at cIRcle.
But sometimes, the research materials that cIRcle receives are not as easily categorized, like the Thompson River Salish Dictionary. “When material comes to us, it’s because there’s a reason to believe that cIRcle is the best home for it.”
Once the material has been scanned and edited by the Digitization Centre, ready for its new digital home within the repository, the team at cIRcle figures out how to describe the item, adding metadata that maps to UBC Library’s standards and best practices. The team also ensures that the appropriate permissions are in place, such as the distribution rights for previously published works.
“It’s really about asking questions to figure out where to get that information from. If there’s a published version of the work, we can go to the publisher for distribution rights,” says Stephens-Kyte.
In the case of An English-Squamish Dictionary, a graduating project written in 1973, the journey to digitization was a little more unusual, says Stephens-Kyte, and the result of a combined effort from past and present library employees. While a physical copy of the dictionary already existed in the Rare Books and Special Collections (RBSC) catalogue, emerita librarian Margaret Friesen, who had been a friend of the late author, discovered that a digitized version did not yet exist at the library. Coordinating between the Digitization Centre, RBSC, and the author’s spouse , who was able to sign the license, Friesen helped the dictionary find a new, digital home at cIRcle.
“Especially with these retrospective items, we’re not in a position of guessing what the person wanted. Trying to map what cIRcle is today with what people understood about access and distribution 40 years ago is really challenging. We’re trying to establish what is the most ethical and responsible way to ensure that everybody is on board and that there are no barriers to access for the item,” says Stephens-Kyte.
The impact digitization and open access can have is not limited to scholarly endeavors either.
“It’s not just for the students, because it’s a huge book,” says Dr. Schellenberg, referring to the Thompson River Salish Dictionary. “It’s for the community members. It is basically the only dictionary of that language that exists, and now you can carry it around on your phone.”
If any Indigenous community members have questions or concerns about the digitization of these materials, please reach out to the UBC Library Digitization Centre or contact Bronwen Sprout (bronwen.sprout@ubc.ca).
This project is part of UBC Library’s strategic direction to create and deliver responsive collections.
April is Sikh Heritage Month in B.C. and is a special time for celebrating Sikh culture, art, and history, as well as honoring the invaluable contributions of the Sikh community to Canada. It carries great significance for Sikhs as it was during this auspicious month that Guru Gobind Singh, the tenth and last human Sikh Guru, established the Khalsa order. Vaisakhi, typically observed on the 13th or 14th of April, not only signifies the formation of the Khalsa, but also symbolizes the beginning of the spring harvest when farmers pay tribute to and thank God for the abundant harvest while praying for future prosperity.
Please visit our new book display located in the Asian Centre foyer, dedicated to the traditions surrounding Sikh Heritage Month and the celebrations of Vaisakhi. The display will be on until April 30.
Our authentication service, OpenAthens, is currently seeing issues with ScienceDirect. A lot of users are being blocked access.
Seems to be impacting multiple institutions. We are investigating!
A couple workarounds that seem to work:
From the ScienceDirect page, if you click the Orange Institutional Icon and search for University of British Columbia Library, you can login there for access
Entrance to Special Collections. UBC Archives Photograph Collection. UBC 1.1/15912
The Rare Books and Special Collections and University Archives Reading Room will be closed on Thursday, April 18, and Friday, April 19. Normal satellite reading room hours will resume on Monday, April 23. We apologize for any inconvenience!
UBC Library is pleased to announce the 2024 recipients of the UBC Undergraduate Prize in Library Research.
Launched in 2023, the UBC Undergraduate Prize in Library Research is a way to showcase students’ effective and innovative use of library services, information experts and resources provided by UBC Library. The Prize was established by UBC Library to encourage more and deeper use of its resources and collections, to advance information literacy at UBC, and to promote academic excellence at UBC.
This year’s winners include:
Diana Andrews, 3rd year Faculty of Arts student, won a $2,000 prize for her statement on her project A Machine Inhabited by the Ghost of a Woman’: Nonhuman Agency in Mary Borden’s The Forbidden Zone.
CJ McGillivray, 3rd year Faculty of Arts student, won a $2,000 prize for her statement on her project The Ideal (Ro)man: How Portia Balances Violence and Integrity in Julius Caesar.
Kyla Terenzek, 4th year Faculty of Arts student, won a $2,000 prize for her statement on her project No species-level evidence of thermophilization in microclimates of the Mytilus edulis species complex in the Pasley Island Archipelago after the 2021 Pacific Northwest Heat Dome.
Alexei Villareal, 3rd year Faculty of Arts student won a $1,000 for his statement on his project (Extra)ordinary People: Familial Memory and Heterotopia in the Visual Chinatown of Yucho Chow.
“UBC Library is thrilled to present this Prize for a second year to these students, who have each demonstrated a keen ability to seek out scholarly information and shared their research journeys through thoughtfully written project statements,” says University Librarian Dr. Susan E. Parker.
Adjudication for the prize was carried out by a committee that included librarian, faculty and student representation from both UBCO and UBCV and was led by the Associate University Librarian Research and Scholarship, Aleteia Greenwood. Notably, the committee’s student representatives are previous winners of the Prize.
“The adjudication committee was impressed with the quality of submissions to the Prize. The submissions were very well written, insightful, and the approach students took to their research was interesting and innovative,” says Greenwood.
Prizes will be awarded at a reception to be held in May. Congratulations to Diana, CJ, Kyra and Alexei!
