Canadiana enthusiasts can take in an exhibition that highlights the history of the Canadian flag, the flag debates of the first half of the 20th century and the now-familiar Maple Leaf flag.

The exhibit, which runs until March 9, is at UBC Library’s Rare Books and Special Collections division, located on the lower level of the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre.

The Irving K. Barber Learning Centre and Woodward Library are proud to present Dr. Larry Goldenberg – an award-winning Canadian researcher, pioneer in the treatment of prostate cancer and world-renowned advocate of patient education. Dr. Goldenberg authored one of the first books to explain prostate cancer treatment options in layman’s terms. Prostate Cancer: All You Need to Know to Take an Active Part in Your Treatment, now in its third edition, is widely considered to be one of the best resources available to men diagnosed with the disease.

Come join us as Dr. Goldenberg, director of the Vancouver Prostate Centre and head of the Department of Urologic Sciences at UBC, talks about his research and new developments.

A live Q&A Webcast of this event will be available at http://tiny.cc/goldenberg

Seats are limited, so please reserve as soon as possible! You can RSVP at 604.827.4366 or ikblc-events@interchange.ubc.ca

The event takes place on Wednesday, March 2, 2011 from 4:30 p.m. to 5:30 p.m. It will be held in the Chilcotin Board Room (Room 256) at the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre.

Dear users – UBC Library is proud to present Summon, your new one-stop search tool.

Summon provides fast, relevance-ranked results on any topic from UBC Library’s collections in a single search. It will let you search the full range of UBC Library’s vast holdings – including books, journals, articles, newspapers, government publications, maps, data, conference proceedings, course materials and more – all in one place.

You can view our collections of e-books, e-journals, databases, indexes and open access resources. The records of cIRcle – UBC’s Information Repository – and the Library’s digital image collections are also available for your research needs.

And last but not least, Summon is speedy. Just give it a try and find out for yourself.

The launch of Summon underlines a key goal of UBC’s strategic plan: “Enhance and integrate access to print and digital collections to make them easier to find.”  Our new discovery tool will make your search efforts quicker and better. And we hope you agree – please let us know what you think by sending comments and questions to lib.summonfeedback@exchange.ubc.ca.

You can find more information on Summon here.

Happy searching!

The Irving K. Barber Centre is proud to present writers Ray Hsu and Evelyn Lau, who will appear at an upcoming instalment of the Robson Reading Series.

Ray Hsu is a poet, activist and scholar who teaches creative writing at UBC. His book Anthropy won the 2005 League of Canadian Poets’ Gerald Lampert Award and was shortlisted for the Trillium Book Award for Poetry. He has published over 100 poems in more than 35 journals across Canada, the U.S. and the U.K., including Fence, The Fiddlehead, and New American Writing. Cold Sleep Permanent Afternoon, the follow-up to Anthropy, is the second book in a prospective trilogy that explores the “grammar of personhood.”

Evelyn Lau was born in Vancouver in 1971. She is the author of four volumes of poetry, two works of non-fiction, two short story collections and a novel. Runaway: Diary of a Street Kid, published when she was 18, was a Canadian bestseller and was made into a CBC movie starring Sandra Oh in her first major role. Lau’s prose books have been translated into a dozen languages worldwide. You Are Not Who You Claim won the Milton Acorn People’s Poetry Award; Oedipal Dreams was nominated for the Governor-General’s Award. Her work has appeared in over 100 literary magazines, garnering four Western Magazine Awards and a National Magazine Award. She has also won the Air Canada Award for Most Promising Writer and the Vantage Women of Originality Award. Her poems have been included in the Best American Poetry and Best Canadian Poetry series. She has read from and discussed her work at literary festivals and universities around the world; she has freelanced as a mentor to aspiring writers through UBC’s Booming Ground and SFU’s Writing and Publishing Program.

Living Under Plastic represents a major departure from Lau’s previous poetry books. It opens up to explore new subjects: family history, illness, death and dying, consumerism and the natural world. In a tone that is often elegiac, without ever being maudlin, these poems are steeped in immortality and loss.

This Robson Reading Series event takes place on Thursday, February 24 from 1 p.m. to 2 p.m. in the Victoria Learning Theatre (Room 182), located on the lower level of the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre.

You can find more information about the Robson Reading Series here.

cIRcle, UBC’s information repository, celebrated a special milestone at the end of January when the 30,000th record was added to its holdings.

In 2008, UBC Library launched cIRcle, which serves as the digital archive of UBC’s intellectual output. It features published and unpublished materials created at UBC, and it is openly accessible – meaning that it is freely available online. Some highlights of cIRcle’s collection include UBC material related to the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Games, along with several thousand recent UBC theses and disserations, and nearly 24,000 older theses, as part of the UBC Retrospective Theses project.

The 30,000th record to join the cIRcle collection is a Chemistry Ph.D. thesis entitled The chemistry of thujone: the synthesis of rose oil components and germacrane analogues. In the past week, it has been viewed by users in countries including Canada, the U.S., the United Kingdom, India and Russia.

You can find more information on cIRcle here.

Need a new approach to hitting the books? Check out UBC’s online workshop series and learn about time management, budgeting basics, critical thinking, note-taking, exam strategies and more.

You can find out more information here.

Additional photo credit information: Listening to History by Bill Woodrow, photo by cliff1066.

Come out on Wednesday, February 9 for a fascinating talk on rare books at UBC Library, courtesy of the Arts Wednesdays program.

What determines a “rare” book?  What authors and topics are included in this exclusive designation?  Who collects rare books and why? Join Ralph Stanton, Head of Rare Books and Special Collections (RBSC) at UBC Library, as he explores the known and unknown treasures housed in UBC’s collection at the Irving K. Barber Learning Center. Discover topics ranging from classic literary collections to the world of golf.

Arts Wednesdays, a free public lecture series now in its seventh successful season, brings UBC’s outstanding Faculty of Arts to the entire community. Held at Robson Square in downtown Vancouver, the winter 2011 season will feature a series devoted to the Creative Arts. The February 9 event begins at 6 p.m.; Robson Square is located at 800 Robson Street.