Hans Schreier - Drivers of environmental change: the case of the mountains

Hans Schreier – Drivers of environmental change: the case of the mountains

November 18, 2010

Webcast sponsored by the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre and hosted by St. John’s College’s Principal’s Lecture Series. Dr. Hans Schreier is Professor Emeritus, Faculty of Land & Food Systems, UBC. Dr. Schreier’s research focuses on watershed management, land-water interactions, non-point sources of pollution in urban and agricultural areas, stormwater management, water needs for food production, and climate change adaptation strategies. He has worked extensively in the Himalayas and Andes and in the mountains of British Columbia. In 2001, Dr. Schreier was awarded the King Albert International Mountain Award for scientific accomplishments of lasting value to the world’s mountains.There is much debate swirling around the topic of environmental change; the discourse has most recently focused on floods and earthquakes in Pakistan and China, on changing sea ice conditions in the Arctic Ocean and on threats to the world’s biodiversity. The blame is most commonly ascribed to the phenomenon of climate change. To what extent is climate the most important driver of environmental change? And to what extent is the news entirely negative? Scientists and scholars from France, the United Kingdom, the United States and Canada have been invited to share their expert perspectives on the topic. This talk will discuss climate change, land use change, and the combined impact of both on mountains — the water towers of the world. Suggestions, adaptation strategies, and options and opportunities to protect water supplies and reduce the risk of flooding will be discussed as well as learning from mistakes: i.e., channelization vs. natural channels.

Relevant Books and Articles at UBC Library

Schreier, H., & Canadian Public Policy Collection. (2014). Innovative storm water management: Translating science into actions. Canadian Water Network. [Link]

Schreier, H. (2001). Drug targeting technology: Physical, chemical, biological methods. New York: Marcel Dekker.

Schreier, H., Brown, S. J., MacDonald, J. R., & University of British Columbia. Institute for Resources and Environment. (2006). Too little and too much: Water and development in a Himalayan watershed. Vancouver, B.C: Institute for Resources and Environment, University of British Columbia.

Schreier, H., & Brown, S. (2002; 2001). Scaling issues in watersheds assessments. Water Policy, 3(6), 475-475.

UBC Library Research Guides

Sustainability

Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Sciences

Read More | No Comments

Stewart Brand's "Rethinking Green" Webcast Available online

November 17, 2010

Webcast sponsored by the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre. Hosted by UBC Reads Sustainability Lecture Series, and held at the Liu Institute of Global Issues, Steward Brand has been an environmentalist for over 40 years, and shares his wisdom in his new book, Whole Earth Discipline: An Ecopragmatist Manifesto. His book is a compilation of his reflections and lessons which suggest a shift in the environmentalists’ dogmatic approach, and describes a process of reasonable debate and experimentation. His iconoclastic proposals include transitioning to nuclear energy and ecosystem engineering, and are sure to provoke widespread debate. He has helped define the collaborative, data-sharing, forward-thinking world in which we live. Brand is the founder of the Whole Earth Catalog, the Global Business Network, the Long Now Foundation and the Well.

Read More | No Comments

Eliza Dresang – Project VIEWS: Early Learning Initiatives That Work Successfully (or Do They?)

November 17, 2010

Webcast sponsored by the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre and hosted by the School of Library, Archival, and Information Studies (SLAIS). Abstract: How do we know whether early learning initiatives in which public libraries are involved work? That is, what is the impact on early learners? Dr. Eliza Dresang, the Early Learning Public Library Partnership, and the Foundation for Early Learning in Washington State have joined forces to address this challenging topic through Project VIEWS, funded through the Institute for Museum and Library Services. Dresang will give an overview of the early learning assessment research landscape in Washington. She will then speak to the related research in which she is currently involved and the potentially ‘radical’ idea of how she will adapt her research with school-age children to an early learning audience, based on a general principle she holds for research involving children.

Select Articles Available at UBC Library

Dresang, E. T. (1997). The resilient child in contemporary children’s literature: Surviving personal violence. Children’s Literature Association Quarterly, 22(3), 133-141. [Link]

Dresang, E. (2006). Intellectual freedom and libraries: Complexity and change in the Twenty‐First‐Century digital environment. The Library Quarterly, 76(2), 169-192. doi:10.1086/506576. [Link]

Dresang, E. (2005). The information-seeking behavior of youth in the digital environment. Library Trends, 54(2), 178-196. [Link]

Dresang, E. T., & Koh, K. (2009). Radical change theory, youth information behavior, and school libraries. Library Trends, 58(1), 26-50. doi:10.1353/lib.0.0070. [Link]

UBC Library Research Guides

Library, Archival, and Information Science

Early Childhood Education

Read More | No Comments

UBC Photographic Society – My Everyday

November 16, 2010

UBC Photographic Society

The UBC Photosociety featured photo exhibit entitled “My Everyday” at the Irving K. Barber Learning Center Gallery that displayed work done by members of the UBC Photosociety. The exhibition’s theme was about daily living in Vancouver, and the ways that those lives intersect with university life.

The ideas of the photo exhibition is that often the process of capturing the lives of others—be they family members, friends, co-workers, models, or people in the community—but photographers do not often think through the ways in which their praxis mediates their own experience of reality, or the ways in which this capturing provides an illusory sense of their world as objectively theirs. For the exhibit, my everyday, emerging photographers have captured the things they see, do, are inspired by, and frustrated by in their everyday lives as students and members of the university community, as a means of both encouraging and denying fellow-feeling with others. Thus, the exhibit will allow for a theorization of the “everydayness” of university life—a life all too often described as alien to the “real” world—but at the same time will encourage the viewer to see that everyday life is best understood in terms of a plurality of perspectives.

The UBC Photo Society is an interactive organization for anyone interested in photography, be they casual, serious amateurs or professional photographers. The club offers a wide variety of activities: an online weblog, photo and digital competitions, study groups via mail and the internet, how-to programs, an annual photo competition and a raft of other activities and services.

To see more photos of this exhibition, please find here.

Read More | No Comments

George Buchanan – Supporting the Reading of Digital Books

November 5, 2010

Webcast sponsored by the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre and hosted by the School of Library, Archival, and Information Studies (SLAIS) and the Digital Information Interaction Group. Libraries have traditionally stored large volumes of physical documents, and, in recent years, this has been supplemented by an increasing proportion of digital texts. Whilst there has been an extensive research into the reading of relatively short documents, there is a surprisingly limited detailed knowledge of how longer digital documents are found, chosen and read. With the emergence of Kindles, iPads and other portable digital devices that have a major or sole purpose of supporting reading, it is timely to re-investigate the use of longer electronic texts, such as digital books. In this talk, Dr. Buchanan will report the key findings of a four-year research project that has addressed the selection and reading of digital books, and suggest a number of avenues for future investigation.

Select Articles Available at UBC Library

Hagen, O. A., & Ebrary Academic Complete (Canada) Subscription Collection. (2010). Digital books: Competition and commerce. Hauppauge, N.Y.: Nova Science Publishers. [Link]

Goldsborough, G. (2005). Digitized books versus digital books. Manitoba Historical Society.

Bernstein, A. L. (2009). World book digital libraries. Library Media Connection, 28(3), 102. [Link]

Rosenthal, S. (2011). Lerner digital interactive books. Library Media Connection, 29(4), 102. [Link]

UBC Library Research Guides

Library, Archival, and Information Science

Read More | No Comments

Annabel Lyon

November 4, 2010

Annabel Lyon’s most recent novel, The Golden Mean (Random House Canada, 2009), animates the relationship between the young Alexander the Great and his tutor Aristotle. It won the 2009 Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize and was shortlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize, the Governor General’s Award for Fiction, and the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize. Annabel’s previous work includes the short fiction collection Oxygen (McClelland & Stewart, 2003), a suite of three novellas, The Best Thing for You (2004), and the juvenile novel, All-Season Edie (Orca Books, 2008). She lives in New Westminster, BC.

On the orders of his boyhood friend, now King Philip of Macedon, Aristotle postpones his dreams of succeeding Plato as leader of the Academy in Athens and reluctantly arrives in the Macedonian capital of Pella to tutor the king’s adolescent sons. An early illness has left one son with the intellect of a child; the other is destined for greatness but struggles between a keen mind that craves instruction and the pressures of a society that demands his prowess as a soldier. Exploring this fabled time and place, Annabel Lyon tells her story in the earthy, frank, and perceptive voice of Aristotle himself. With sensual and muscular prose, she explores how Aristotle’s genius touched the boy who would conquer the known world. And she reveals how we still live with the ghosts of both men.

Annabel Lyon read at the Parliamentary Room of the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre on September 16, 2010.

Read More | No Comments

Steve McNutt – Volcano Lightning

November 4, 2010

Webcast sponsored by the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre and hosted by the Earth and Ocean Sciences Department. Steve McNutt is a volcano seismologist who works part time for the Alaska Volcano Observatory. He coordinates volcano seismology research for the UAFGI, and presently supervises two PhD students, a Post-Doc, and two full time employees. His research interests include studies of source and propagation effects for volcanic tremor, low-frequency events, and explosion earthquakes; volcanic hazards assessments in Alaska, California, and Central America; and the mechanical behavior of volcanoes, including periodicity of eruptions, and the effects of earth tides, sea level variations, and tectonic stresses on triggering eruptive activity. Since July 1999 he has served as Secretary-General for the International Association of Volcanology and Chemistry of the Earth’s Interior.

Relevant Books and Articles at UBC Library

Grunder, A., & McNutt, S. (2005). Assembly focuses on volcanism and societal impacts. Eos, Transactions American Geophysical Union, 86(18), 178. doi:10.1029/2005EO180004 [Link]

Lu, Z., Dzurisin, D., Biggs, J., Wicks, C., & McNutt, S. (2010). Ground surface deformation patterns, magma supply, and magma storage at okmok volcano, alaska, from InSAR analysis: 1. intereruption deformation, 1997-2008. Journal of Geophysical Research -Solid Earth, 115. doi:10.1029/2009JB006969 [Link]

UBC Library Research Guides

Sustainability

Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Sciences

Read More | No Comments

Mark Wexler – Sam Sullivan Public Salon Series

November 3, 2010

Mark Wexler is Professor of Management Ethics & Management at SFU and a renowned expert on ethics. Webcast sponsored by the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre.

Relevant Books and Articles at UBC Library

Wexler, M. N. (1987). Conjectures on the dynamics of secrecy and the secrets business. Journal of Business Ethics, 6(6), 469. [Link]

Wexler, M. N. (2006). Successful resume fraud: Conjectures on the origins of amorality in the workplace. Journal of Human Values, 12(2), 137-152. doi:10.1177/097168580601200203 [Link]

UBC Library Research Guides

Education

Philosophy

Read More | No Comments

UBC Photosociety Exhibit "My Everyday" at IKBLC Gallery, Nov 1-18th.

November 3, 2010

The UBC Photosociety is hosting a photo exhibit entitled “my everyday” at the Irving K. Barber Learning Center Gallery from November 1 to 18, 2010, and will host a reception on Thursday, November 4, 2010 from 6:30 pm to 9:30 pm. This exhibition will display work done by members of the UBC Photosociety that deal with their daily lives, and the ways that those lives intersect with university life.

The idea behind this exhibit is that photography is often the process of capturing the lives of others—be they family members, friends, co-workers, models, or people in the community—but photographers do not often think through the ways in which their praxis mediates their own experience of reality, or the ways in which this capturing provides an illusory sense of their world as objectively theirs. For the exhibit, my everyday, emerging photographers have captured the things they see, do, are inspired by, and frustrated by in their everyday lives as students and members of the university community, as a means of both encouraging and denying fellow-feeling with others. Thus, the exhibit will allow for a theorization of the “everydayness” of university life—a life all too often described as alien to the “real” world—but at the same time will encourage the viewer to see that everyday life is best understood in terms of a plurality of perspectives.

Read More | No Comments

Featured town: Bella Coola at IKBLC

November 3, 2010

In a new series of blog posts, Rare Books and Special Collections will be featuring a historic document, photograph or map related to one of the B.C. towns represented in the room names of the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre.

Receipt from A.C. Christensen & Son, Bella Coola

To kick things off, we’ll start with Bella Coola which is a small town on the Central Coast of B.C. The Bella Coola area is famous for the MacKenzie Rock, where in 1793 Alexander MacKenzie wrote his name on a rock to commemorate completing the first recorded journey across North America. In the early to mid 20^th century, the Bella Coola area was home to the Tallheo Cannery, which is where our featured document comes from. The Tallheo Cannery was built in 1912 by the Canadian Fishing Company. The archives of the Tallheo Cannery include administrative records such as correspondence, financial documents, and fishermen’s statements. The document shown is a receipt for purchases made by the Cannery from a Bella Coola store, A.C. Christensen & Son, who were dealers in “dry goods, boots and shoes, hardware and groceries.”

In the Barber Centre, the Bella Coola room is number 193, a meeting room on the first floor of the building.

Check back every two weeks for another B.C. town and another historic document!

Bella Coola room, Barber Centre

(written by Sarah Romkey)

Read More | No Comments