Interactivity at the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre
Visitors to the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre (IKBLC) have long enjoyed the ties to B.C. – from the design to the place names used throughout the building.
A new project highlights the place names in a new and creative way.
As of December, 32 rooms in the building feature a plaque with a historical image and QR codes to learn more about the history behind the region. The QR codes can be scanned using a phone or tablet, and have links to book study space and search Library materials, as well as historical information about the place. For example, the Chilcotin Room (256 on the second floor) has a black-and-white image of the gold mining ghost town, circa 1938.
“This project really merges history with technology,” says Allan Cho, Community Engagement Librarian at the IKBLC. The project, dubbed the Virtual Museum, also “reinforces the Barber Centre mandate – connecting each room to a region in British Columbia.”
Cho started the initial pilot of 12 rooms in May 2013, to see if there was interest from students. Cho hopes that the plaques will encourage students to interact and engage with the space in new and interesting ways.
The featured rooms include:
- Atlin Meeting Room, Room 191
- Bella Coola Meeting Room, Room 193
- Chapman Learning Commons, Room 300
- Chilcotin Board Room, Room 256
- Chung Room and Collection, Room 111
- Columbia River Room, Room 316
- Dodson Room, Room 302
- Kootenay River Room, Room 422
- Moresby Classroom, Room 185
- Qualicum Reading Room,Room 305
- Skeena River Room, Room 317
- Stewart Meeting Room, Room 184
- Stikine Room, Room 260
- Tofino Meeting Room, Room 156
- Ucluelet Meeting Room, Room 158
- Yukon Meeting Room, Room 181
- Bamfield Meeting Room, Room 157
- Bella Bella Meeting Room, Room 192
- Fraser Meeting Room, Room 183
- Gold River Videoconference Room, Room 272
- Golden Jubilee Room, Room 400
- Hartley Bay Meeting Room, Room 266
- Keremeos Lounge, Room 262
- Lillooet Room, Room 301
- Namu Meeting Room, Room 194
- Parliamentary Room, Room 155
- Peace River Room, Room 261
- Ridington Room, Room 321
- Thompson Meeting Room, Room 196
- Thompson River Room, Room 315
- Victoria Learning Theatre, Room 182
We are actively looking at possibilities using augmented reality. Future potential includes using LAYAR, a tool that allows people to scan printed material and look at digital content on their phones or tablets.
Start exploring the Virtual Musuem online or in-person at the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre.
Alcuin Society Book Design Exhibition
Since 1981, the Alcuin Society has sponsored the oldest national competition that recognizes and celebrates fine book design in Canada, the Alcuin Society Awards for Excellence in Book Design in Canada, and
the Robert R. Reid Award and Medal to recognize lifetime achievement or extraordinary contributions, to the Book Arts in Canada. This exhibition at the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre showcases some of the finest book designs in Canada in appreciation of beautifully produced books.
T
he Alcuin Society focuses on three primary areas of activity that connect like-minded individuals and promote the finest in Canadian book design:
- Regular events feature world-renowned design, typography and publishing experts.
- Annual awards celebrate innovative books and showcase designers’ work across the globe.
- Publications delve into cutting-edge news about book arts, and offer a stunning keepsake for members.
The Society offers lectures and workshops on many aspects of the book, and sponsors exhibits of finely produced books including private press works and contemporary works notable for their excellence in design, working with institutions such as Simon Fraser University, University of British Columbia, University of Victoria, Vancouver Museum, Vancouver Public Library, Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design, Society of Graphic Designers of Canada, BC Book Arts Guild, Westcoast Calligraphy Society, the Art and Letters Club of Toronto to organize public events.
Amphora, the Society’s journal, covers a wide range of book-related topics including: collecting, typography, type design, type-setting, calligraphy, paper-making, book design, ornamentation, illustration, printing, binding and the impact of digital technology on the book. All members receive Amphora as well as occasional keepsakes and printed or calligraphic ephemera.
To see photos of this exhibition, please click here.
December 5, 2014 to January 6, 2015 at the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre
LSI Public Talks on Diabetes
Webcast sponsored by the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre and hosted by the Life Sciences Institute at UBC. This talk – “Drugs, Diet and Genes. Personal Approaches to Treat Diabetes and Obesity” is about the link between obesity and diabetes, current treatment options for type 2 diabetes and how genetics and personalized medicine will inform better treatments in the near future.
This talk is an informal and open forum that aims to bring the latest and greatest ideas in the area of the Life Sciences to the public. Each event is free to attend and will include a talk, networking opportunities and reception. This series focuses on Personalized Medicine and how the Life Sciences Institute faculty, staff and students are working to change clinical practice, improve health outcomes, and reduce health costs. In partnership with the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre’s Health Information Series, an ongoing public lecture series that take place in the Lower Mainland community.
Moderator
UBC Library Research Guides
Mona Gleason – Constructing Child Health
Webcast sponsored by the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre and hosted by the UBC School of Nursing and the Consortium for Nursing History Inquiry. This presentation explores how health professionals contributed to conceptions of “the healthy child” in early twentieth century Canada. Based on her recently published book entitled Small Matters: Canadian Children in Sickness and Health, 1900 to 1940 (McGill- Queens, 2013), Mona Gleason will focus on how and why increasing attention to the health of children on the part of doctors, nurses and educators in schools changed the culture of childhood and the culture of nursing in this critical period of change. Gleason asks how, and with what consequences for youngsters and their families, adult professionals contributed to the social construction of what was considered “healthy” and “normal.”
Mona Gleason is a Professor in the Department of Educational Studies at UBC. She specializes in the history of children and youth and the history of education. Her new book, Small Matters: Canadian Children in Sickness and in Health, 1900-1940 appeared in 2013 with McGill-Queens University Press.
Select Articles Available at UBC Library
Barman, J., & Gleason, M. (2003). Children, teachers and schools in the history of British Columbia. Calgary: Detselig Enterprises.
Gleason, M. (2006). Between education and memory: Health and childhood in english-canada, 1900-1950. Scientia Canadensis, 29(1), 49-72. doi:10.7202/800503ar. [Link]
Gleason, M. (2013). Small matters: Canadian children in sickness and health, 1900-1940. Montreal; Ithaca: McGill-Queen’s University Press.
Gleason, M. L. (2010). Lost kids: Vulnerable children and youth in twentieth-century Canada and the united states. Vancouver: UBC Press.
Gleason, M., Scholars Portal Books: Canadian Electronic Library, & Canadian Publishers Collection. (1999). Normalizing the ideal: Psychology, schooling, and the family in postwar Canada. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. doi:10.3138/j.ctt2tv3m3. [Link]
UBC Library Research Guides
Linda Quiney – Veiled Concerns: Social and Professional Tensions of Voluntary Aid Detachments and Military Nurses during the 1st World War
Webcast sponsored by the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre and hosted by the UBC School of Nursing and the Consortium for Nursing History Inquiry. With only a brief training and minimal hospital experience, the VADs entered the unfamiliar world of the military hospital to work alongside the qualified Canadian military nurses at home, and British military nurses overseas, performing tasks that ranged from scrubbing floors and cleaning bedpans, to applying dressings and foments, and even assisting in the operating theatres. In this discussion Linda Quiney examines the boundaries that defined the VADs’ place at the bedside, the contested space of the wartime hospital wards, and the challenges they presented to the authority of the nursing professionals.
Linda Quiney is a historian. She has taught health history courses at the Department of History at UBC and is affiliate member of the Consortium for Nursing History Inquiry at the UBC School of Nursing. Currently she is working on a book on Canadian Women as Voluntary Aid Detachment (VAD) nurses during and after World Ward One.
Select Articles Available at UBC Library
Quiney, L. J. (1998). “Sharing the halo”: Social and professional tensions in the work of world war I Canadian volunteer nurses. Journal of the Canadian Historical Association, 9(1), 105-124. doi:10.7202/030494ar. [Link]
Quiney, L. J. (2002). “Filling the gaps”: Canadian voluntary nurses, the 1917 Halifax explosion, and the influenza epidemic of 1918. Canadian Bulletin of Medical History, 19(2), 351. [Link]
Quiney, L. J. (1998). Assistant angels: Canadian voluntary aid detachment nurses in the great war. Canadian Bulletin of Medical History = Bulletin Canadien d’Histoire De La Médecine, 15(1), 189. [Link]
UBC Library Research Guides
Abenomics Two Years In: Successes, Failures, and Transformations
Webcast sponsored by the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre and program sponsored by the Institute for Asian Research, Fondation France-Japon de l’EHESS, CNRS, Oxford University, Waseda University,and Stanford University.
Speakers: Joseph Caron (Former Canadian Ambassador to Japan), Takeo Hoshi (Stanford), Kenji Kushida (Stanford), Sébastien Lechevalier (EHESS), Miyajima Hideaki (Waseda), Sako Mari (Oxford) and Yves Tiberghien (UBC)
JOSEPH CARON is a Distinguished Fellow of the Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada and a Professor and Honorary Research Associate at the Institute of Asian Research of the University of British Columbia. He is a former Canadian High Commissioner to India and former Canadian Ambassador to China and Japan.
TAKEO HOSHI is Henri and Tomoye Takahashi Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI), Professor of Finance (by courtesy) at the Graduate School of Business, and Director of the Japan Program at the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (S-APARC), all at Stanford University.
KENJI KUSHIDA is the Research Associate in the Japan Program at the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center. He holds a PhD in political science from the University of California, Berkeley, and was a graduate research associate at the Berkeley Roundtable on the International Economy. Kushida’s research interests are in the fields of comparative politics, political economy, and information technology. He focuses mainly on Japan with comparisons to Korea, China, and the United States.
SEBASTIEN LECHEVALIER is Associate Professor at L’École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS, Paris). He is also President of Fondation France Japon de l’EHESS (EHESS Paris日仏財団) and director of the French network of Asian Studies (http://www.reseau-asie.com/). His research focuses on the Japanese economy, corporate diversity, evolution of welfare systems in Asia, and inequalities.
HIDEAKI MIYAJIMA is a Professor of the Graduate School of Commerce, in Waseda University, as well as the Director at the Waseda Institute for Advanced Study (WIAS). He is a Faculty Fellow at the Research Institute of Economy in Chung-And University. His fields of interest include The Japanese Economy, corporate finance, and comparative financial systems.
MARI SAKO is Professor of Management Studies at Saïd Business School, Co-Director of the Novak Druce Centre for Professional Service Firms and a Professorial Fellow of New College, Oxford. Her most recent work has focused on business and professional services and on outsourcing. Her work on business services in the UK has attracted the interest of UK policy makers. Her work on outsourcing has been mentioned in the Economist, the Financial Times, the Times, and the Economic Times of India.
YVES TIBERGHIEN (Ph.D. Stanford University, 2002) is the Director of Institute for Asian Research (IAR) and an Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of British Columbia. He is also a Faculty Associate at the Center for Chinese Research, at the Center for Japanese Research, and at the Institute for European Studies at UBC, as well as a Research Associate at Science Po Paris and at the Asia Centre (Paris).
Select Articles and Books Available at UBC Library
Hoshi, T. (2011). Financial regulation: Lessons from the recent financial crises. Journal of Economic Literature, 49(1), 120-128. doi:10.1257/jel.49.1.120. [Link]
Hoshi, T. (2006). Economics of the living dead. The Japanese Economic Review, 57(1), 30-49. doi:10.1111/j.1468-5876.2006.00354.x [Link]
Lechevalier, S. (2006). Sheridan, K.: Planning japan’s economic future. Journal of Economics, 89(3), 291-294. doi:10.1007/s00712-006-0214-6. [Link]
Sako, M. (2006). Shifting boundaries of the firm: Japanese company-Japanese labour. Oxford; Toronto: Oxford University Press.
Tiberghien, Y., Project Muse University Press eBooks, & Ebrary Academic Complete (Canada) Subscription Collection. (2007). Entrepreneurial states: Reforming corporate governance in France, Japan, and Korea. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. [Link]
UBC Library Research Guides
Asian Canadian Studies with Terry Watada, Jim Wong-Chu, and Glenn Deer
This event took place on November 27, 2014 at the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre. An afternoon event with Terry Watada and Jim Wong-Chu, two pioneers of Asian Canadian writing, and moderated by Dr. Glenn Deer, Professor, English Department UBC, this fireside chat encompassed a wide range of topics, including the speakers’ memories of the early days of the Asian Canadian cultural studies movement.
Speaker Bio’s
Terry Watada is a Toronto writer with many titles to his credit. His publications include The Sword, the Medal and the Rosary (a manga, HpF Press and the NAJC), The TBC: the Toronto Buddhist Church, 1995 – 2010, (non-fiction, HpF Press & the Toronto Buddhist Church 2010), Kuroshio: The Blood of Foxes, (novel, Arsenal Pulp Press 2007), Obon: the Festival of the Dead (poetry, Thistledown Press 2006), Ten Thousand Views of Rain (poetry, Thistledown Press 2001),Seeing the Invisible (a children’s biography, Umbrella Press 1998), Daruma Days (short fiction, Ronsdale Press 1997), Bukkyo Tozen: a History of Buddhism in Canada (non-fiction, HpF Press & the Toronto Buddhist Church 1996) and A Thousand Homes (poetry, Mercury Press 1995).
As a playwright, Watada has seen seven of his plays achieve mainstage production; his best known is perhaps Vincent, a play about a Toronto family dealing with a schizophrenic son. Workman Arts of Toronto has remounted it several times since its premiere in 1993. Most notably, it was produced at the National Arts Centre in Ottawa and the first and second Madness and Arts World Festival in Toronto and Muenster, Germany, respectively. His essays have been published in such varied journals and books as Maclean’s Magazine (March 2011), Canadian Literature (UBC), Ritsumeikan Hogaku “Kotoba to sonohirogari” (Ritsumeikan University Press, Kyoto Jpn), Crossing the Ocean: Japanese American Culture from Past to Present, Jimbun-shoin Press (Kyoto Jpn), and Anti-Asian Violence in North America (AltaMira Press, California). He wrote a monthly column in the Japanese-Canadian national journal the Nikkei Voice for 25 years. He now contributes a monthly column for the Vancouver JCCA Bulletin which expanded its scope to a national level in 2012.
Among his numerous citations and awards, he was presented with the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee Medal and the NAJC National Merit Award recognizing his writing, his music and his community volunteerism in 2013. His archives which include records, tapes, and significant artifacts of the Asian North American experience have been collected as the Terry Watada Special Collection and housed in the East Asian Library and his manuscripts (drafts and final), personal papers and books have been housed in the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library, Robarts Library, University of Toronto. He is awaiting the publication of his fourth collection of poetry – The Game of 100 Ghosts (TSAR Publications, Fall 2014) – and his second manga, Light at a Window (Toronto NAJC and HpF Press, Fall 2014).
Jim Wong Chu was born in Hong Kong in 1949, and came to Canada in 1953 settling in Vancouver in 1961. Witness to and participant in much of the Chinese Canadian activism in the 1970s and early 80s, Jim became one of its documenters. After completing a degree in Creative Writing at UBC in the 1980s Jim published Chinatown Ghosts (Arsenal Pulp Press, 1986), the first book of poetry published by an Asian Canadian. As a persistent activist and cultural producer Jim co-founded the Asian Canadian Writers Workshop, Ricepaper Magazine, Pender Guy Radio, the Asian Canadian Performing Arts Resource (ACPAR), literASIAN: A Festival of Pacific Rim Asian Canadian Writing and the Vancouver Asian Heritage Month Festival. With the sheer girth of his activity Jim has been instrumental in creating a cultural scene inclusive of Asian Canadian talent.
Wong-Chu is among the first authors of Asian descent with the likes of SKY Lee and Paul Yee who challenged the Canadian literary establishment and questioned why it was devoid of any Asian writers. His book Chinatown Ghosts (Arsenal Pulp Press, 1986) was one of the first books of poetry by an Asian Canadian writer. Wong-Chu later contributed to Inalienable Rice and co-edited Many Mouthed Birds, two of the earliest anthologies of Asian Canadian writing.
Dr. Glenn Deer completed his B.A. (Honours) at the University of Alberta and his M.A. and Ph.D. at York University, Toronto. His early interests were in contemporary poetry and phenomenological poetics and he wrote his M.A. thesis on Robert Creeley. Longspoon Press published a collection of his poetry in 1982. During his Ph.D. research, after completing comprehensive exams in Renaissance Literature, Rhetoric and Critical Theory, and Canadian Literature, he began to focus on discourse studies, the rhetoric of power in narrative fiction, and postmodernism and Canadian Literature. After completing his Ph.D. at York in 1987, he joined the English Department at the University of British Columbia to teach in the areas of rhetoric and Canadian Literature. McGill-Queen’s University Press published his study of ideology and discourse in Canadian fiction in 1994, Postmodern Canadian Fiction and the Rhetoric of Authority.
In 1993 Deer’s interests in ideology critique and the rhetoric of racialization developed into research on rhetorical representations of Asian Canadian culture in the local media and a series of directed readings with graduate students, graduate seminars, and undergraduate courses in the areas of comparative Asian Canadian and Asian American studies. He received a Vice-President’s grant in 1997 to organize the conference “Diversity, Writing, and Social Critique.” In 1999 he was the guest editor for a special issue of Canadian Literature on Asian Canadian writing (Number 163, December 1999), and he has been an associate editor with the journal since the summer of 2000. From 1999 to 2002, he served as the Chair of the First-Year Program in English.
Deer’s recent teaching and research interests include the politics of historiography in Michael Ondaatje, comparative studies of Asian American and Asian Canadian writing, mixed-race writing and trans-ethnic desire, the representations of food in trans-cultural writing, and the discourses of the nuclear. He has written an editorial for the Fall 2002 issue (number 172) of Canadian Literature on the aftermath of September 11: “Writing in the Shadow of the Bomb”. His current graduate seminar is an attempt to work through some of the features of modern thought and literature that arise in the context of such global crises.
November 27, 3.00-4.00PM at the Dodson Room (Rm 302), Irving K. Barber Learning Centre
This talk is sponsored by the Asian Canadian and Asian Migration Studies Program and the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre
