Due to library catalogue upgrades, the Automated Storage and Retrieval System (ASRS) will be unavailable from June 24th to June 28th, 2010.

Please contact Rare Books and Special Collections (spcoll@interchange.ubc.ca or 604-822-2521) by June 23, 2010 if you are planning to visit during this time period and wish to consult archival material.

A fascinating exhibition that complements the release of a new book on children’s literature is now on display at UBC Library’s Rare Books and Special Collections (RBSC) division.

Picturing Canada: Canadian Children’s Illustrated Books and Publishing, highlights Canadian picturebooks from the last 200 years. The exhibition includes rare children’s books as well as popular productions from recent years. It was curated by Shannon Ozirny, Meaghan Scanlon and Geneviève Valleau, all students at UBC’s School of Library, Archival and Information Studies.

The exhibition features highlights from Picturing Canada: A History of Canadian Children’s Illustrated Books and Publishing, written by Judith Saltman and Gail Edwards. Saltman is an Associate Professor at UBC’s School of Library, Archival and Information Studies and Chair of the Master of Arts in Children’s Literature program; Edwards is the Chair of the Department of History at Douglas College.



The University of British Columbia Rare Books and Special Collections (RBSC), the School of Library, Archival and Information Studies (SLAIS), and the Alma Mater Society (AMS) Art Gallery

cordially invite you to an informal reception for the opening of the exhibition:
DRIPPYTOWN: VANCOUVER LIFE THROUGH THE EYES OF INDEPENDENT CARTOONISTS–Selected Comics and Cartoons from UBC Rare Books and Special Collections, designed by the students of the UBC SLAIS “Visual Arts and Performing Arts Special Collections” course.

Featured Artists: Ken Boesem, Julian Lawrence, James Lloyd, Josué Menjivar, Jason Turner, Colin Upton

WHERE:
UBC School of Library, Archival and Information Studies, Suite 470, Irving K. Barber Learning Centre, 1961 East Mall, Vancouver.

WHEN:
FRIDAY, October 23, 2009, 12noon-1:30 p.m. Please R.S.V.P. (by October 22nd) to Francesca Marini at fmarini@interchange.ubc.ca

The Exhibition is Free and Open to the Public  on the UBC Campus:

October 23, 2009-January 31, 2010
UBC Rare Books and Special Collections (RBSC)-Reading Room
Irving K. Barber Learning Centre-First Floor, 1961 East Mall, Vancouver
Opening Hours: Monday to Friday, 10 a.m.-5 p.m.; Saturday, 12 noon-5 p.m. Closed on Sundays and Holidays; special hours over Christmas Break. When accessing UBC Rare Books and Special Collections, please check bags and coats at the entrance.

The students: Carys Brown, Leah Bruce, Elizabeth Bryan, Michelle Chan, Alice Darnton, Kelsey Dupuis, Reagan Flaherty, Heather Hadley, Annie Jensen, Samuel King, Emma Lawson, Jessie London, Anne Low-Beer, Susannah Smith, Rebecca Slaven, Kate Sloan, Alicia Yeo, Walter Zicha

Acknowledgements:
Francesca Marini, Assistant Professor and Course Instructor, UBC SLAIS
Ralph Stanton, Head, UBC RBSC
Jeremy Jaud, AMS Art Gallery Commissioner
The UBC RBSC and AMS Art Gallery Staff

Poster Design: Adrien Van Viersen (http://www.adrienvanviersen.com)

For further information contact fmarini@interchange.ubc.ca

Rare Books and Special Collections and University Archives will be closed on Monday, August 17, 2009 for a staff retreat.

We thank-you for your understanding and regret any inconvenience this closure may cause.

If you have any questions, please contact us by email spcoll@interchange.ubc.ca or by phone at 604-822-2521.

An illuminating set of letters from the wife of a prominent Methodist missionary in B.C. is now freely available online.

The letters from Emma Crosby (1849-1926) provide a fascinating glimpse into the missionary experience. Due to her gender, Emma was not able to become a missionary, although her husband Thomas served as one on the north coast of B.C. The letters describe how women such as Emma sustained their husbands and served as missionaries in all but name.

UBC Library’s Rare Books and Special Collections division (RBSC) holds 87 letters written by Emma Crosby as part of the Thomas and Emma Crosby fonds. The majority of these letters were written from Fort Simpson, B.C., to her family in Ontario between 1874 and 1892.

Jan Hare, an Assistant Professor in the Department of Language and Literacy Education, and Jean Barman, Professor Emerita in the Department of Educational Studies, provided the inspiration for developing this digital collection. Barman offered to provide RBSC with transcriptions of Crosby’s letters, created for Hare and Barman’s recent publication, Good Intentions Gone Awry. This book discusses Emma Crosby’s missionary life and the legacy of her work at Fort Simpson.

The digitization of the Crosby letters was a collaboration between RBSC and University Archives. Bronwen Sprout, Digital Initiatives Librarian at Archives, and Katherine Kalsbeek, Reference Librarian at RBSC, led the project.

Special thanks to: April Ens, a former professional experience student from the School of Library, Archival and Information Studies, who digitized the letters and created the metadata for the collection; and Leslie Field, Archives Assistant, who provided expert assistance and guidance with the digitization work. Thanks also to Jan Hare and Jean Barman for the transcripts of Crosby’s letters and for their introduction that accompanies the digital collection.

You can view the collection at http://angel.library.ubc.ca/crosby.html. Please send comments to Bronwen Sprout (bronwen.sprout@ubc.ca) or Katherine Kalsbeek (katherine.kalsbeek@ubc.ca).

Due to a special event, Rare Books and Special Collections / University Archives will close at 3pm on Thursday, October 2nd, due to a special event.

We apologize to our users for any inconvenience this may cause.

An exhibition of nineteenth-century English chapbooks is currently on display at UBC’s Rare Books and Special Collections (RBSC). Chapbooks are booklets that were popular in rural areas and towns from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries. Literature of this sort was a miscellany, spanning jestbooks to histories of depraved criminals, medieval romances to song verses. Although once read by many, chapbooks are extremely delicate and ephemeral: being cheaply produced on low-quality paper and small in size, they were not made to survive over time. Many are illustrated with luridly coloured woodcuts. There are over three hundred in RBSC, many of which are part of the Arkley Collection of Early & Historical Children’s Literature. The exhibition demonstrates the collection’s value as a catalogue of the diverse themes covered by this type of print publication in nineteenth-century Britain.

The exhibition, created by English Master’s student Catherine Whitehead, will run from July 2008 to the end of November 2008. RBSC is open from 9am to 5pm, Monday to Friday.

Rare Books and Special Collections (RBSC) at UBC Library’s Irving K. Barber Learning Centre has been closed since August 3, 2007 to allow for the joining of phases one and two of the building. Due to construction-related factors, the job is now scheduled for completion on Friday, September 14. RBSC will reopen on Tuesday, September 18. Communication with RBSC may be difficult on Monday, September 17 since we will be moving computers and other equipment. RBSC will not be open for Saturday service on September 8 and 15. Staff will not be able to provide public service in person or public access to collections until September 18 as the RBSC reading room is at the centre of construction. However, reference and information help via e-mail (spcoll@interchange.ubc.ca) and telephone (604-822-8208) is available.

The Library regrets any inconvenience that this closure may cause.

In Canadian public and academic institutions, there is not a lot of online information available for people new to archival research. Katherine Kalsbeek, Reference Librarian in Rare Books and Special Collections at UBC Library, and Carolyn Casenas (a former adjunct archivist at York University) developed an onine tutorial intended for undergraduate and graduate students who have little or no experience doing research in an archives.

The goal of the tutorial is to guide users in the research process and the culture of archives. The tutorial can be used in its entirety or in sections. While the basic content is the same, the examples and procedures outlined in each tutorial are institution specific. To access the tutorials, please see the UBC version at http://www.library.ubc.ca/spcoll/Guides_UBC/Index.html or the York version at http://www.library.yorku.ca/binaries/ArchivesSpecialCollections/Guides_York/index.html.

Rare Books and Special Collections, and University Archives, at UBC Library are pleased to announce the launch of a newly digitized collection: “Japanese Maps of the Tokugawa Era”, at http://angel.library.ubc.ca/tokugawa/.

UBC Library’s Rare Books and Special Collections holds one of the world’s largest collections of maps and guidebooks of the Japanese Edo period, also called the Tokugawa period, 1603-1867. The core of the collection was formed after World War II by George H. Beans. Over 300 maps from the collection have been digitized and are searchable and viewable online. The digitization process allows the user to see a whole map as well as offering detailed views of larger or smaller portions of the maps.

The focus of the Beans collection is on privately published and travel-related maps and guides published in Japan. There is world coverage, although the majority of maps are of the whole or parts of Japan . A number of prominent Japanese woodblock artists are represented in the collection.

The digitization of the Japanese Map Collection is a collaborative project between the UBC Library’s Rare Books and Special Collections and the University Archives. In the first phase of the project all the single-sheet maps have been digitized. A second phase will digitize the maps in atlases. Bronwen Sprout, Digital Initiatives Librarian at the University Archives, and Katherine Kalsbeek, Reference and Maps Librarian at Rare Books and Special Collections guided the first phase of the project to completion. Special thanks to Leslie Field, Archives Assistant, who provided expert assistance and guidance with the digitizing work.

The project is funded by the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre, and has also received support from the Department of Asian Studies. The collection is located at: http://angel.library.ubc.ca/tokugawa/ (click on the “detailed image” link in each record to zoom in on the images). Please send comments or suggestions to: Bronwen Sprout or Katherine Kalsbeek.

For further information about viewing the collection, please contact Ralph Stanton , Rare Books and Special Collections Librarian.