Last semester students from the School of Library, Archival and Information Studies class ARST 515 updated a number of archival finding aids to be compliant with the current Rules for Archival Description. They did a great job and hopefully found it to be a useful real life experience.  The updated finding aids are:

Archaeological Society of British Columbia fonds, by Joanna Hammerschmidt, Judy Hu, and Asiyih Modarai

Labour History Association fonds, by Sara Church, Carolyn Downs, and Myron Groover

Patricia Blondal fonds, by Adam Gold and Sarah Rathjen

Frank Charnley fonds, by Shalene Williams, Jen Busch, and Marisa Tutt

E.M. Delafield fonds, by Ellie Kim, Kelly E. Lau, and Patrick Ansah

John Emerson fonds, by Andrew Berger, Peter Houston, Jayson Kennedy, Tony Power

George Gee fonds, by Yolanda Bustos, Tristan Campbell, and Jessie London

Irene Howard fonds, by Sergey Kovynev, Lisa Snider, and Lindsay Szymanski

International Order of the Good Templars fonds, by Massimiliano Grandi, Myles Legacy, Jamie Sanford, Amanda Tomé

Thanks to all of the students for their hard work, and to adjunct professor Jennifer Douglas for coordinating.

Archives of note recently added at Rare Books and Special Collections:

Peter Faminow fonds: Peter Faminow was born in Alberta to Doukhobor parents.  He studied law, and became actively involved in the Doukhobor youth movement.  He helped organize the 1958 Conference on Peace through Non-violence, authored a column called “Dasha” in the Doukhobor publication Mir, and served as the secretary-treasurer of the Union of Doukhobors in Canada. After relocating to North Vancouver to practice law, Faminow served as a councillor and alderman for the District of North Vancouver between 1960 and 1974. The fonds contains documents related to both Faminow’s career as a lawyer and politician, and also related to his involvement in the Doukhobor community, including rare documents circulated in the Doukhobor community in the 1920’s-1950’s, documents related to the New Denver school issue, and correspondence with Koozma Tarasoff.  The finding aid for the fonds can be found here:  http://www.library.ubc.ca/spcoll/AZ/PDF/EFG/Faminow_Peter.pdf. The image above is shows the cover of a petition to the government regarding New Denver School (from file 3-17).

W. Randle Iredale fonds: A graduate of UBC, Randle Iredale was a well-known Vancouver-based architect.  Some of his notable projects include the development project at Portage Mountain, the Sedgewick Undergraduate Library at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver’s Park Site 19 Project, and the Systems Control Center at Simon Fraser University. Randle Iredale passed away in 2000. This fonds contains extensive material related to Iredale’s architectural career, including technical drawings, photographs and slides.  The finding aid for the fonds can be found here: http://www.library.ubc.ca/spcoll/AZ/PDF/I/Iredale_Randle.pdf.

The Chung Collection has been featured over the years by several B.C. newspapers, usually in the arts or culture section.  This morning it graces the front page of the Vancouver Sun’s business section, where Joanne Lee-Young uses the collection to highlight B.C.’s longstanding economic ties with Asia.  She writes, “B.C. may promote its Asia Pacific Gateway as a newfangled concept, but many of Chung’s keepsakes, especially the ones collected from Canadian Pacific Railways and Steamships, are reminders that people and trade to and from Asia have been flowing for much more than 100 years.”

Read the whole article here: http://www.vancouversun.com/business/Chung+Collection+illuminates+Chinese+experience/2566307/story.html

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.