The inaugural e-newsletter of Chinese Canadian Stories is now available.

Chinese Canadian Stories, an initiative of UBC Library and SFU Library, is funded by Citizenship and Immigration Canada’s Community Historical Recognition Program.

You can view the e-newsletter here, and you can view the Chinese Canadian Stories website here.

The 2009/10 Report of the University Librarian to the Senate is now available here.

This document, which serves as UBC Library’s annual report, provides a valuable overview of important developments from the past fiscal year, and highlights goals and plans for the year ahead.

Want to learn how to find and use images? Then check out UBC Library’s ARTstor workshops.

ARTstor is a digital library of more than one million images licensed for educational use at UBC, covering the areas of art, architecture, the humanities and the social sciences. In this workshop you will learn how to effectively search the ARTstor database, and interact with its many features – such as saving and downloading images and using the offline presentation software.

Friday, January 21, 10:30 a.m. to noon – register here.

Wednesday, February 16, 10:30 a.m. to noon – register here.

Friday, March 11, 10:30 a.m. to noon – register here.

Attention, distance learners: UBC Library has a new information portal for you. Now you can find everything you need to know about Library services in one place. Find information about getting your library card or barcode and pin number; register for home delivery; request journal articles; find research help and more. Check it all out here.

It’s 2011, and Woodward Library is proud to enter the new year with a new look. Late last fall, the Library’s lower level – also known as the Garden Level – was unveiled to the public after undergoing an extensive renovation. The handsome result is a user-centred, collaborative study space that features more natural light, increased seating and bookable group-study rooms.

The Woodward renovation is a great example of UBC Library’s commitment to enhancing student learning, which is a key plank of its strategic plan. Refurbishments are also underway at the David Lam and Law libraries.

Funding for the work at Woodward Library was provided by Classroom Services, UBC Properties Trust and UBC Library development funds.

At its seasonal luncheon leading up to the holidays, UBC Library announced that its charity raffle had raised more than $1,000 for Covenant House, which provides food, shelter, clothing and counselling for street youth in Vancouver.

The raffle prize winner was Lucia Balabuk, who works in UBC’s Science One program, which is based in the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre. Lucia won an amazing technicolour quilt that was made by the talented UBC Library Knitwits team. (Lucia appears on the right in the photo, while Sara McGillivray, a Knitwits member and UBC Library employee, is on the left.)

Thank you to the Knitwits for their effort, and to everyone who bought raffle tickets to support a very worthy cause.

UBC Library is pleased to announce a new addition to its Adam Matthew digital collections: London Low Life.

“This wonderful digital collection brings to life the teeming streets of Victorian London, inviting students and scholars to explore the gin palaces, brothels and East End slums of the 19th century’s greatest city.”

This collection will be of interest to 19th-century scholars researching: working-class culture, street literature, popular music, urban topography, “slumming,” prostitution, the Contagious Diseases Act, the Temperance Movement, social reform, Toynbee Hall, police and criminality.

Material includes:

– Fast literature

– Street ephemera: posters, advertising, playbills, ballads and broadsides

– Penny fiction

– Cartoons

– Chapbooks

– Street Cries

– Swell’s guides to London prostitution, gambling and drinking dens

– Reform literature

– Maps and views of London

London Low Life is just one of the 25 fabulous Adam Matthew digital collections at UBC Library. You can view others here.

Feeling festive? Then make sure to visit ’Tis the Season, a winter holiday-themed exhibition now on display at UBC Library’s Rare Books and Special Collections (RBSC) division.

’Tis the Season collects both local and international works for the holiday season, and features modern and classical highlights from RBSC’s holdings. The exhibition includes first editions, as well as fine press productions on themes including Santa Claus, Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol and Christmas on the West Coast.

The exhibition was curated by Emma Wendel, a practicum student from UBC’s School of Library, Archival and Information Studies.

‘Tis the Season runs to January 6, 2011 at RBSC, located on level one of the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre. Happy holidays!

The Art Libraries Society of North America (ARLIS/NA) is pleased to announce Bailey Diers as the recipient of its 2010-11 Internship Award. Bailey, a student in the Master of Library and Information Studies degree program at UBC’s School of Library, Archival and Information Studies, is also a Graduate Academic Assistant in UBC Library’s Assessment Office.

The prestigious award grants $2,500 to support a period of internship for a student preparing for a career in art librarianship or visual resources curatorship. In addition to the $2,500 stipend, Bailey will receive a one-year complimentary membership in ARLIS/NA.

Congratulations Bailey!

The Fall 2010 issue of Insight, UBC Library’s newsletter for faculty, features an array of stories on new spaces, copyright considerations, the Douglas Coupland archives, the Library’s strategic plan and more.

You can view the new issue of Insight here: Insight Fall 2010.