The 2010 LibQUAL survey is over – and UBC Library is happy to announce that participant Sara Komarnisky is the lucky winner of a $200 gift card to UBC Bookstore.

Sara, pictured above with University Librarian Ingrid Parent (left) and LibQUAL Project Leader Margaret Friesen, is a PhD student in socio-cultural anthropology who began her studies last September.

The LibQUAL survey assesses user satisfaction with services at UBC Library, and the latest round was completed in March. We received 619 responses and 276 comments – and here are some of the highlights: 

• Responses were received from 165 undergraduates, 302 graduate students and 148 faculty members
• Respondents were evenly represented from the sciences (51 per cent) and non-sciences (49 per cent)
• 74 per cent of respondents visit UBC Library to use its resources at least monthly
• 100 per cent access resources through the Library website
• 54 per cent of respondents are 30 years old or younger

Overall, many respondents praised the Library’s resources and services, yet also identified areas for improvement, including:

• more e-resources, e-journals and e-books
• more print resources
• better access from home
• more spaces for silent study and group study
• a more user-friendly website

Next steps include analyzing results, reporting findings and recommending ways to improve services. UBC Library will keep you up to date on developments.

Thank you to all respondents for their valuable input, and congratulations Sara!

Photo credit: Jill Pittendrigh

A handful of First Nations projects and the first out-of-province initiative are among the successful recipients of the 2010/11 B.C. History Digitization Program (BCHDP) awards.

The digitization program, an initiative of the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre, was launched in 2006. It provides matching funds that help libraries, archives, museums and other organizations digitize unique historical items, including images, print and sound materials.

In 2010/11, the Learning Centre provided nearly $200,000 for 25 projects. Altogether, BDHDP funding has totalled more than $650,000 for 76 projects throughout British Columbia.

Grant funding requests for 2010/11 significantly exceeded available resources and this meant that the adjudication committee had to make some difficult decisions. This year marked the first out-of-province grant, made to the United Church of Canada, which is headquartered in Toronto. It is one of three approved projects involving records relating to First Nations groups in British Columbia. The project will result in the digitization of visual and documentary records relating to Methodist and United Church missions in B.C.

In addition, grant funding has been awarded to eleven photographic digitization projects around the province as well as five applications that featured the digitization of local newspapers.

During the past four years, projects have included photographic collections, community newspapers, oral history recordings, city directories, medical artifacts, three-dimensional fossil specimens and more.

For a complete list of grant recipients and project descriptions, please visit here.

The upcoming Media Transatlantic conference, which focuses on the topic of media studies, runs from Thursday, April 8 – Saturday, April 10 at the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre.

Registration is required for the conference, but all are welcome to attend the keynote address by B.C. writer and artist Douglas Coupland, which takes place at 5:15 pm on April 8 in the Learning Centre’s Golden Jubilee Room (top level). This will be followed by a reception in the Lillooet Room on level three.

All other events are scheduled to take place in the Dodson Room, also on level three.

An international roster of media scholars will attend the conference – more information can be found at http://www.mediatrans.ca.

Art enthusiasts, take note: “Kabuki in Print” is now available for viewing on the upper level of the Asian Library. The show is presented in celebration of the Asian Library’s 50th anniversary, and in anticipation of the performance of TomoeArts’ production of “ODORI: The World of Kabuki Dance,” which will be performed at UBC’s Frederic Wood Theatre on April 10 and 11.

The exhibition examines the intimate relationship between woodblock printing and Kabuki theatre. The images document the wide thematic range of popular entertainment during the Edo period (1600-1868).

The show draws from private print collections supplemented by art historical publications from UBC Library’s collection. Highlights include several original Japanese woodblock prints by popular artists Utagawa Toyokuni (1769–1825), Utagawa Kuniyoshi (1797–1861) and Toyohara Kunichika (1835–1900).

“Kabuki in Print” runs until May 16. It is curated by Maiko Behr and presented by the Canadian Society for Asian Arts in conjunction with UBC’s Asian Library.

UBC Library is pleased to announce that it is the recipient of TLEF (Teaching and Learning Enhancement Fund) support for two projects. “Online Learning Opportunities for Commuter and Distance Education Students” has been granted more than $25,000, and “Working 2.0: Co-Curricular Learning Tools Assessment, Evaluation and Development for a Business School Learning Commons” has been granted more than $32,000. Trish Rosseel, UBC Library’s Teaching and Learning Librarian, is the lead on the former project, and Jan Wallace, Head of the David Lam Library, is the lead on the latter project.

The Teaching and Learning Enhancement Fund was created in 1991 to enrich student learning by supporting innovative and effective educational enhancements. Each autumn, the Vice Provost and the Associate Vice President Academic Affairs invites all UBC Vancouver faculties to apply to the TLEF. An adjudication committee reviews and ranks proposals and recommends appropriate funding to those approved.

Congratulations to the winning applicants, and thank you to all Library employees who applied for the latest round of TLEF funding.

The University of British Columbia and its institutional repository both feature prominently in a pair of global rankings.

UBC is the top-ranked Canadian university – and 35th in the world – according to research from CSIC (the Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas), the largest public research body in Spain.

A separate CSIC ranking places UBC’s cIRcle (http://circle.ubc.ca) at 77th out of 400 global institutional repositories (IRs). An IR is an online storehouse for an institution’s scholarly and administrative output.

“This is such an encouraging result, given that cIRcle began developing only about three years ago,” says Hilde Colenbrander, cIRcle’s Co-ordinator. “We plan to continue enhancing our holdings so we can showcase UBC’s contributions to the world.”

For more information on the university and IR rankings, please see www.webometrics.info/top8000.asp and http://repositories.webometrics.info/top400_rep_inst.asp.

How do societies change in response to contact with other cultures? And what roles do objects play in mediating these connections over time and place? This two-and-a-half-day symposium – held March 4 through March 6 at the UBC Vancouver campus – brings together anthropologists, geographers, historians, Indigenous artists and activists, and literary scholars whose research focuses on cross-cultural encounters and material exchange in a global context. Invited speakers will share works-in-progress and critically assess their own approaches toward the study of cultural exchange between peoples, places and things.

UBC Library is proud to support this event. Rare Books and Special Collections has worked with organizer Neil Safier of UBC’s Department of History on an accompanying digital collection, and the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre is an event sponsor.

For more information, please visit http://globalencounters.ubc.ca/symposium.

Ingrid Parent, UBC’s University Librarian, is inviting members of the University community to a special event entitled Get up close with cIRcle: Revealing your research to the world.

cIRcle is UBC’s openly accessible digital repository for research and teaching materials created by the UBC community and its partners. Three UBC scholars will talk about using cIRcle to disseminate research.

Up close with cIRcle takes place on Wednesday, March 10 from 2 p.m. to 3 p.m. in the Lillooet Room, located on level three of the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre. The event is free, and light refreshments will be served.

To register, please e-mail circle-events@interchange.ubc.ca by March 4.

UBC’s Asian Library, home to the largest Asian collection in Canada, is proud to announce its 50th anniversary celebrations.

Five decades ago, the Asian Library was launched with the purchase of the unparalleled Puban collection from China. The same year, the Library became one of only three North American repositories of Japanese government documents.

Today, its collection includes more than 580,000 volumes in nine languages, such as Korean, Hindi, Urdu, Punjabi, Sanskrit, Tibetan and Indonesian. Users at UBC and beyond visit the Asian Library to access a huge range of information on Asia, including language, literature, history, art, social and political sciences, economics, Asian-Canadian history, science and technology, and more.

An Asian Library 50th Anniversary Celebration takes place on Friday, March 5 at 2:30 p.m. in the Auditorium of the Asian Centre. Speakers include Ingrid Parent, University Librarian; Eleanor Yuen, Head Librarian of the Asian Library; Robban A.J. Toleno, a PhD student in Asian Studies; Henry Yu, an Associate Professor in the Department of History; Wes Pue, Vice Provost and AVP Academic Resources; and a representative of the Ron Bick Lee family.

To register, please RSVP to library.development@ubc.ca or call the UBC Library Development Office at 604-827-4112.

To view a range of Asian Library 50th Anniversary events, please visit www.library.ubc.ca/asian/celebrating50.

Michael Brauer, a UBC Professor from the School of Environmental Health, has won UBC Library’s inaugural Innovative Dissemination of Research Award for the Cycling Metro Vancouver Route Planner.

The Innovative Dissemination of Research Award, which includes a certificate and $2,000, honours UBC faculty, staff and students who expand the boundaries of research with the creative use of new tools and technologies.
 
Brauer led a team that developed an interactive cycling route planner (www.cyclevancouver.ubc.ca), which integrates research from various sources and disseminates it via a user-friendly Google Maps interface. This planner is part of the Cycling in Cities program, based at UBC’s School of Population & Public Health and the School of Environmental Health.

The tool allows cyclists to find routes that fit personal preferences, such as distance, elevation gain, air quality and vegetation. The underlying code for the route planner can also be easily adapted to other municipalities wishing to embark on similar projects.

On behalf of UBC Library, congratulations to Michael and his team!