A reminder that Rare Books and Special Collections, University Archives and the Chung Collection will be closed on Monday September 3 for Labour Day, as will all branches of UBC Library (the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre building is open, but the library functions will be closed).

On the subject of Labour Day, you may be interested to know that labour unions and workers’ issues is a strength of the collections here at RBSC. We hold the archival collections of many labour unions from around the province of B.C., including many primary source industries (forestry and woodworking unions, mining, steelworkers, etc) as well as other industries such as public servants and the retail and service sectors. We also have the archival collections of many labour activists and political collections.

To get a broad overview of our labour collections, you can do an advanced search in the library catalogue: under “type,” choose “Archival/mixed collections” and use keywords such as “labour”, “union”, and/or keywords related to the industry that you are interested in researching. For online content you may also wish to search the UBC Digital Collections for keywords like “labour” or “union.”

Cesar Chavez and Donald MacDonald at a convention of the Canadian Labour Congress, 1974, Fisherman Publishing Society fonds

Archivist’s note: We also could have called this post, “Repacking the Douglas Coupland fonds.” We get a lot of questions from the general public about how we choose storage for archival material. Many of these questions can be answered with common sense, sometimes we use more specialized knowledge. Below our student archivists explain their storage choices for this collection:

In previous posts, we discussed preservation practices regarding some of the incredibly unique items that are part of this accrual. To switch things up a bit, we thought we would take you on a little tour of our oh-so-ordinary storage practices which help ensure the long term preservation of archival material.

The most common type of storage is the record storage box.

Record storage box

Typically, these boxes are used to store paper records (go figure!). In the case of the Douglas Coupland fonds, we also occasionally house other items in these boxes – such as the small canvases shown below. Note the file support that ensures the items don’t slip and slide around inside the box.

Record storage box with canvases

Some items are too large and unruly to be contained in a typical records box. In cases such as these, we store items in oversized boxes like these:

Oversize storage boxes

Items should never be placed in boxes that are too small or too large. You don’t want the material to be squashed or knocked about. If material doesn’t fit in any of the standard sized storage containers, custom boxes can be ordered to fit the exact dimensions of the items. Custom boxes not only ensure that we safely and properly enclose items, but also allow us to maximize space in the vault — a hot commodity in archives!

Some items need to be stored flat.  In this fonds, we have large photographs and poster boards that would warp if stored vertically. Map cabinets are the perfect solution for these items.

Map cabinets

I bet you had no idea we put so much thought into something as simple as a box!

Archivists note: This past week was a busy one: the student archivists worked hard on packing the accrual into appropriate containers for storage. All collections need to be re-housed into archivally appropriate containers, but this one is a particular challenge to wrangle because of the oddly shaped and sized objects. Below the students describe some basic conservation work on one of the collection’s more atypical items…

In our last post, we talked about how we approached processing a bejeweled hornet’s nest. As it turns out, this wasn’t the only unusual or unique item that required extra thought in terms of preservation and special storage. This old pizza box with calligraphy (complete with grease stains, encrusted cheese, and lingering pizza odor) needed to be cleaned before being permanently housed as part of the fonds.

Coupland pizza box with calligraphy

In this case, the stuck-on food particles were of particular concern. As a general rule, no food or beverages are allowed inside RBSC. Not only could spilled coffee or ketchup stain or permanently damage the materials, but lingering crumbs could attract certain, ahem…undesirable patrons—namely critters like cockroaches or, heaven forbid, rodents.

So what did we do with the crusty pizza box, you ask? We began by isolating the pizza box so that it wouldn’t contaminate any of the other materials. A separation sheet marks the pizza box’s original location in relation to the other materials and directs future users to its new “home”—a special archival quality box that it gets all to itself. The next step was to do some surface cleaning to remove the crumbs, cheese bits, and as much of the grease stain as possible.

Pizza box surface cleaning

We began by gently scraping off bits of cheese and crumbs with a scalpel. We took great care to not damage the box and to fully isolate and dispose of the rogue crumbs in the nearest rubbish receptacle. Our next step was to give the box a thorough cleaning with a chemical sponge. These sponges were originally designed to remove soot and grease caused by fire damage, but they work wonders on dirty archival documents. The stain is still visible on the Coupland pizza box, but the process did remove some of the excess grease.

Before being stored in its archival box, the pizza box was sealed inside a large Ziploc bag to lock in any remaining odor or microscopic food particles that might attract pests.

Finally, this item, like all special collections materials, will be stored inside RBSC’s environmentally storage areas. This item and most other paper-based archival material will live in the Automated Storage and Retrieval System (ASRS) which maintains a temperature and relative humidity that makes it very hard for most pests to live in.

For more information on the topic of pest management, please visit the Northeast Document Conservation Center website. 

So, even though you may not be able to eat your own slice of pizza while visiting RBSC, you can always access and take a whiff of Coupland’s pizza box—the musty pizza smell is sure to cure anyone’s persistent tummy grumbles.

Question: What glitters and was once home to thousands of swarming insects?

Answer: The contents of file 184-38 of the Douglas Coupland fonds at UBC’s Rare Books and Special Collections.

This dazzling bejeweled hornet’s nest has presented us with a unique range of questions… so let’s take a brief tour of the archivist’s approach to this wonder of nature.

Let’s face the most important question. Why is this hornet’s nest a part of the Douglas Coupland fonds in the first place? If you’re familiar with Coupland’s work you may recall his nest sculptures. This nest that now resides in UBC’s vault is not of his own making, but it does communicate his exploration and interest in these objects. But why is it bejeweled? We’ll leave that one to researchers to figure out! [Archivist’s note: Coupland also made an addition to his archives in 2010 which included wasp-nest paper in various stages of being “hand-chewed” by Coupland- this material resides in boxes 152 through 154 in the collection].

The idea of bringing an object that was created by insects and has been who-knows-where into the our sterile environment made us cringe (believe it or not, archivists aren’t huge fans of pests or dirt or mould or any other force of nature that likes to wreck paper). We did some research and learned a bit about the nature of the hornet beast along the way – check out this website for more info: http://www.ipm.iastate.edu/ipm/iiin/bhornets.html. Since the nest has been around for a few years, it turns out that it won’t be a danger to itself or its new archival neighbors.

Our last obstacle in preparing the nest for its stay in the archives relates to its fragile nature. It certainly doesn’t fit in a legal size acid-free folder. Here’s how we nested the nest (opens a wmv file):

Building a nest for a nest

The fragile nest now resides in an acid-free cardboard box. We stabilized it within the box through the use of foam and tissue padding and archivally-approved bubble wrap.

A reminder that Rare Books and Special Collections, University Archives and the Chung Collection will be closed on Monday August 6th for B.C. Day, along with all other branches of UBC Library.

If you will be spending your long weekend watching the Olympic games, you might be interested to know that Rare Books and Special Collection holds the archives of former Olympian Harold Wright. He represented Canada in the 1932 Olympics in Los Angeles as a sprinter, reaching the semi-finals in the 100 and 200 m races. He went on to become the president of the Canadian Olympic Association, and would play a key role in bringing the summer Olympics to Montreal in 1976. Wright passed away in 1997, and was inducted into Canada’s Sports Hall of Fame in 1987.  His archives contains a great deal of textual documents and ephemera related to sporting in B.C. and Canada, especially the Olympic games. There catalogue record for the collection is here; click on the inventory link for a detailed finding aid.

From August 1-31, 2012 please visit UBC’s Rare Books and Special Collections exhibition entitled Secret Wisdom of the West Coast: Esoteric and Occult practice in British Columbia. Curated by Karen Meijer-Kline, a graduate of the Universiteit van Amsterdam with a Master of Arts degree in Mysticism & Western Esotericism and a current student in the Masters of Library, Archival, and Informations Studies program at UBC, this exhibition will introduce you to a world many of you probably never dreamed existed here in our very own rainy city.

The historical and sociological study of esotericism and occultism is a growing field, as is shown by the emergence of academic programs, conferences and journals focussed on the subject all over the Western world. Close to home, Simon Fraser University’s department of Humanities has recently offered a course on the history of Western Esotericism. Study in this field looks at topics such as magic, alchemy, astrology, Rosicrucianism, Kabbalah, Freemasonry, Theosophy, Spiritualism, New Age, Neopaganism, and the like. These topics, and the people that studied and practiced them, have been and are very influential in history, even though in the past they have been rarely studied. Here at Rare Books and Special Collections, we realized that there are many works in our collection that are related to these topics, and yet: almost no-one knows about them. We decided to delve deeper into the history and practice of esoteric currents in British Columbia, in order to show you some of the very intriguing things that have happened, and still happen in our province!

For many years, Vancouver has been home to several prominent figures in esoteric history, and centre for many esoteric and occult groups. For example, the North Shore was home to Charles Stansfeld Jones, better known as Frater Achad, who was considered the magical child of Aleister Crowley: the most notorious magician of the 20th century. Jones and Malcolm Lowry were friends, and Lowry’s personal library held many fascinating esoteric works, many by Jones or Crowley.
On display at Rare Books and Special Collections will be works that are fundamental to esoteric thought, and esoteric works that have an interesting connection to major figures or organizations in British Columbia. Many might know that Malcolm Lowry had a long standing interest in the occult, and that Robin Skelton was a practicing witch. But did you also know that Alexander Maitland Stephens, the prominent Marxist and poet, was the head of a Theosophical lodge in downtown Vancouver? That there was a Rosicrucian temple in Vancouver? Or that there have been thriving Freemasonic lodges in British Columbia since 1860?

If you would like to see the exhibition, located in the reading room, you can do so until August 31st, from Monday to Friday 10am-4pm. The exhibition is free and open to all members of the public.

If you are unable to visit the exhibition, a pdf version of the exhibition guide is available.

Archivists note: This week our student archivists are going to explain how taxonomies, which is like “tagging” only slightly more sophisticated, is helping them draw out important connections in the Douglas Coupland fonds. It does make me reflect on how the technology we use to catalogue (or arrange and describe, in archives jargon) can affect both the process of arrangement and description, and how the information is displayed to our users. As our student archivists describe below, we at Rare Books and Special Collections are in the process of moving our finding aids into a database system called ICA-Atom. With more, our student team:

A word on taxonomies…

Taxono-what? Ok – so this is library and archives jargon, but if you’re familiar with tagging (who hasn’t tagged a photo on facebook or flickr?) the concept of taxonomies is the same – the only difference being that our “tags” can be organized hierarchically, with broader terms, narrower terms, and related terms. For example, the tag “JPod” could be a narrower term of “literary projects”, and could also have narrower terms to distinguish between the television adaptation script, the drafts, and the final manuscript.

Last post we talked about the challenges in organizing Coupland’s wide variety of materials into an order that maintains a link to how we received the materials, but also organizes them in a way that makes the fonds accessible and understandable to users. Since we have decided to process the materials in the order received, how then will researchers be able to see the relationships between items? Our solution: taxonomies!

Here at RBSC, we are also in the process of migrating our descriptions to a new platform called ICA-AtoM that allows for the use of tags and web-based navigation. ICA-AtoM is an open-source, web-based archival description software that is based on International Council on Archives (ICA) standards, freely available to users (and created by a graduate of UBC’s School of Library, Archival, and Information Studies!). In addition to a lot of other great features, ICA-AtoM also includes a taxonomy module, that will allow us to use a controlled vocabulary of tags when processing the newest Coupland materials.

So how will we go about doing this? First, we’ve created a subject list in ICA-AtoM based on the contents of Douglas Coupland’s material. For example, we have “tags” called Generation A and Girlfriend in a Coma that will be used for all files related to these two literary projects. Collage and Calligraphy are two more that will be used for materials related to some of Coupland’s visual art projects. Clicking on a taxonomy word within ICA-AtoM will reveal all other files related to the same subject. The taxonomy, then, is another  avenue of access that patrons can use in addition to the finding aid/file list to find what they’re looking for. Because we are still in the process of figuring out all the projects and subjects covered in this accrual to the Coupland fonds, we are also creating tags “on the fly” as we work; once we’ve finished the initial process and are working on updating the series-level descriptions, we’ll also be managing the hierarchical relationships between the tags, so relationships between tags are maintained as well. This way, if a patron wants to see everything we’ve added about say, Coupland’s Firefighter’s Memorial in Ottawa, they can search the term “Firefighter Memorial” and all the related records will appear. Further, any of these records will have a tag-link included in the description to all the other related records, as well as listing any other related tags.

Screenshot showing taxonomies in Coupland fonds

We’re excited to be implementing the first use of taxonomies here at RBSC, and we’ll be sure to update you on our progress as we carry on!

The opening hours will be reduced in RBSC / University Archives effective July 30 – August 31. During this time period, RBSC (including the Chung Room) / UA will be open to the public from 10am – 4pm Monday – Friday. Please direct any RBSC-related questions to rare.books@ubc.ca . Please contact Chris Hives with any concerns about University Archives accessibility.

Archivist’s note: When you tell people you’re an archivist, they often assume that we spend a lot of time meticulously re-organizing documents into some kind of “correct” order. This is a misconception- as our student archivists will describe below, maintaining original order is actually an important tenet of archival theory and practice. Here are Dan, Laura and Sarah with more:

Perhaps you are wondering what it is we (student) archivists do when a new set of boxes is delivered? What actually goes on in that processing room? And why is it important? If these questions are keeping you up at night, read on for a look at the first step in processing a new accrual….

The first challenge we faced with the Douglas Coupland project was figuring out how to arrange the material.  We can’t just dump it into acid-free boxes and call it day! One of the fundamental principles of archival work is respect for original order. This states that records should be organized in the order established or intended by the creator. So no alphabetizing! No rearranging by date!

Why is original order important? In a nutshell, it preserves the relationships between records and any evidence that could be gleaned from those relationships. Context is key.

Determining original order isn’t always easy. Sometimes the intended order gets jumbled before or during the transfer of the material to the archives. Other times, if the creator had no system of arranging their own records, there is no original order. In the case of the former, archivists would spend some time analyzing the material in order to restore the original order. In the latter, archivists could impose an order to facilitate arrangement, description, and access.

A small sampling of the variety of material received

Our first order of business was to survey the material in an attempt to discern the original order.  This proved difficult. Why? Each box of material appeared to be a veritable mishmash of non-related items. Manuscripts next to a hornet’s nest next to doodles next to fan mail. At first, we thought it might be necessary to impose an order by arranging the material by artistic medium. Upon closer examination and reflection, we could not be sure there wasn’t significance to the apparent random nature of the material. Because we were concerned we would break important archival bonds if we physically (re)arranged the material, we came up with the following solution:

• process the material according to received order (right down to the individual movie ticket stubs)
• using ICA-AtoM (an open-source archival description software), intellectually arrange the material into series based on artistic medium without physically disrupting the physical order
• create a taxonomy within ICA-AtoM to link materials to other related materials

The archivist's natural habitat

Curious to find out what a taxonomy is? Stay tuned for our next exciting blog post to find out!

We’re very pleased to announce a recent addition (or accrual to use archival language) to the archives of Douglas Coupland (or the Douglas Coupland fonds, again to use the archival terminology). We have been very fortunate to continue our relationship with Doug Coupland since we first acquired his archives in 2008, but for the first time we have decided to shine a light on what happens to archival material between coming in the doors and being made available to users in the reading room.  We think it’s particularly interesting and exciting to do this with the Douglas Coupland fonds because of the wide range of documentation he creates.

We’re fortunate also to have three student archivists jointly handling this project over the summer: Dan Gillean, Laura Hebert and Sarah Hillier are all students from the School of Library, Archival and Information Studies. They will be writing posts on this blog every week or so to keep you updated on their progress. You can see all of our posts on this project by browsing for the Coupland tag on our blog.

Without further adieu, our student archivists:

“On Thursday, June 21st a large shipment of banker’s boxes and strangely shaped packages arrived at UBC Rare Books and Special Collections. The twenty-six pieces comprise the recent accrual to the already substantial Douglas Coupland fonds. Because of Coupland’s varied range of medium (and we mean varied – everything from large-scale sculptures to screenplays to clothing lines) the contents of these boxes present many unique questions from the archival perspective.

“So how to tackle such a diverse accumulation of content? We have been tasked with the arrangement and description of this material and hope to collaboratively produce a clear picture of Coupland’s creative process through our treatment of the accrual. A little about us…

“Dan Gillean – MAS/MLIS Student at SLAIS, entering 3rd year
I’ve been working as a Student Archival Assistant since September of 2011, processing a large accrual from the provincial New Democratic Party. I’m particularly interested in the arrangement challenges we will encounter with this project – for example, how will we know if that flattened box of macaroni was meant for a collage, used in one of the Canada photographs, or kept as a reference item for one of his many narrative projects? What if the answer is all three? More importantly, how can we best indicate these linkages and conjectures to our patrons at RBSC?

“Laura Hebert – MAS/MLIS Student at SLAIS, entering 3rd year
I began my work as a Student Archive Assistant at RBSC just over a year ago. In my time here I have worked on the processing of a number of fonds and collections, both of a personal and organizational nature. Of particular interest to me are the items in this accrual that are atypical in terms of what we see in Special Collections. What are the best ways to treat these items that are so far from the textual record and how can we effectively communicate their context?

“Sarah Hillier – MAS/MLIS Student at SLAIS, entering 3rd year
I started working at RBSC as a Student Archives Assistant about a year ago. Most recently I’ve worked on the arrangement and description of a new accrual to the Arsenal Pulp Press fonds.  Of interest to me regarding the Douglas Coupland fonds is tackling the challenges associated with the proper storage and preservation of non-traditional archival materials, i.e. a bejeweled hornet’s nest, a digital orca, and a styrofoam leg

Our student archivists: Sarah, Dan and Laura

“Influenced by Coupland’s own fondness for the blog format, we will chronicle our journey here. Follow our progress as we unpack the work of the prolific writer and artist.”

Accrual to the Douglas Coupland fonds, awaiting processing