BC History Digitization Program: 2010 Recipients Announced

April 14, 2010

A handful of First Nations projects and the first out-of-province initiative are among the successful recipients of the 2010/11 B.C. History Digitization Program (BCHDP) awards.

The digitization program, an initiative of the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre, was launched in 2006. It provides matching funds that help libraries, archives, museums and other organizations digitize unique historical items, including images, print and sound materials.

In 2010/11, the Learning Centre provided nearly $200,000 for 25 projects. Altogether, BDHDP funding has totalled more than $650,000 for 76 projects throughout British Columbia.

Grant funding requests for 2010/11 significantly exceeded available resources and this meant that the adjudication committee had to make some difficult decisions. This year marked the first out-of-province grant, made to the United Church of Canada, which is headquartered in Toronto. It is one of three approved projects involving records relating to First Nations groups in British Columbia. The project will result in the digitization of visual and documentary records relating to Methodist and United Church missions in B.C.

In addition, grant funding has been awarded to eleven photographic digitization projects around the province as well as five applications that featured the digitization of local newspapers.

During the past four years, projects have included photographic collections, community newspapers, oral history recordings, city directories, medical artifacts, three-dimensional fossil specimens and more.

For a complete list of grant recipients and project descriptions, please visit here.

Front cover exposure for RBSC, UBC Library Vault

April 13, 2010

The April 2010 issue of College & Research Libraries News, an American publication, features an image from UBC Library’s Rare Books and Special Collections on the front cover. Some additional information about the image and the UBC Library Vault is provided inside the publication.

You can view the issue here.

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IKBLC Webcast of Don Page's Black Hole Information Loss: Hawking's Greatest Mistake?

April 13, 2010

Hawking’s 1974 calculation of thermal emission from a classical black hole led to his 1976 proposal that information may be lost from our universe as a pure quantum state collapses gravitationally into a black hole, which then evaporates completely into a mixed state of thermal radiation. Objections to this idea appeared as early as 1980, but it took two decades for the balance of opinion, including Hawking’s, to shift to the belief that information is not ultimately lost by black holes. The debate led to a lot of understanding of gravitational physics, so even if Hawking was originally wrong, it was a truly great mistake. (March 17, 2010). Webcast sponsored by the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre.

Don Page is a Professor of Physics at the University of Alberta in Edmonton. Growing up in Alaskan villages, he completed his high school education by correspondence through the University of Nebraska Extension Division. He received his B.A. in Physics and Mathematics, summa cum laude, from William Jewell College in Missouri, and his M.S. and Ph.D. in Physics from the California Institute of Technology. His Ph.D. thesis, “Accretion into and Emission from Black Holes”, was supervised by Kip S. Thorne and Stephen Hawking. Dr. Page then moved to the University of Cambridge, England, where he held a NATO Postdoctoral Fellowship in Science, worked as a research assistant under Prof. Hawking, and received an M.A.

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Ramachandra Guha – Ten Reasons why India will not and must not become a Superpower

April 13, 2010

Presented by International Development Research Centre and co-hosted by UBC and the Canada-India Foundation, there has been much talk of a coming Asian century, to be dominated by the economic strength and political assertion of China and India. This critically scrutinizes the claims made on behalf of India, and in particular the belief, held by some Westerners and perhaps by many Indians, that India is a coming superpower. It acknowledges the durability, against the odds, of India’s national unity and of its democracy.

It appreciates the recent surge in economic growths, but, at the same time, it provides a critical analysis of the deep fault-lines within Indian society, politics, economics, and culture, to conclude that the tale of India’s imminent rise to superstardom is highly premature. Ramachandra Guha is a historian and biographer based in Bangalore. Now a full-time writer, he has previously taught at the universities of Yale and Stanford, held the Arné Naess Chair at the University of Oslo, and been the Indo-American Community Visiting Professor at the University of California at Berkeley. Webcast sponsored by the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre.

UBC Library Resources

Guha, R. (Ed.). (2014). Makers of Modern Asia. Harvard University Press. [Link]

Guha, R. (2013). Gandhi Before India. Penguin UK. [Link]

Guha, R. (2003). A corner of a foreign field: the Indian history of a British sport. Pan Macmillan. [Link]

UBC Library Research Guides

South Asian Studies

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Jerome Silbergeld – What Is the "Chinese Motion" in Chinese Motion Pictures?

April 10, 2010

BC China Scholars Forum Moving Words, Moving Images, UBC, April 9-10th, 2010. Keynote address: Jerome Silbergeld, P.Y. & Kinmay Tang Professor of Chinese Art History & Director, Tang Centre for East Asian Art, Princeton University What Is the “Chinese Motion” in Chinese Motion Pictures? Co-sponsored by the Museum of Anthropology (MOA). Chinese cinema, like other traditional Chinese arts, is frequently presumed to have a distinguishing national character. But what is that character? Scholars have often compared Chinese film to painted handscrolls and have occasionally suggested certain shared cinematic characteristics: slow pacing, shallow depth of field, and somber mood, among others. This lecture discusses the question of whether Chinese cinema can really be characterized in this way, and whether it truly has anything in common with the other Chinese visual arts. Webcast sponsored by Irving K. Barber Learning Centre.

Select Articles and Books Available at UBC Library

Silbergeld, J. (1982). Chinese painting style: Media, methods, and principles of form. Seattle: University of Washington Press.

P.Y. and Kinmay W. Tang Center for East Asian Art. (2013). The family model in Chinese art and culture. Princeton: Princeton Univ Press.

Silbergeld, J. (2012). Ang lee’s america, in living colour. Journal of Chinese Cinemas, 6(3), 283-297. doi:10.1386/jcc.6.3.283_1. [Link]

Silbergeld, J. (1999). China into film: Frames of reference in contemporary Chinese cinema. London: Reaktion.

UBC Library Research Guides

Chinese Studies

Chinese Film Studies

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Shuyu Kong, Sion Assouline and Tami Blumenfield – Shifting Ground, Moving Images

April 10, 2010

BC China Scholars Forum Moving Words, Moving Images, UBC, April 9-10th, 2010. Webcast sponsored by Irving K. Barber Learning Centre. Panel includes:

Shuyu Kong ( SFU): Making Blockbusters with Chinese Characteristics: China Film Group and the Transformation of Main Melody Film

Sion Assouline (Independent Scholar): Borrowing Badas Eye: Chinese Ink Painting Meets Digital Photography

Tami Blumenfield (University of Washington): Film Festivals and Participatory Video in Yunnan Province

Richard King (UVic): Chair

Select Articles and Books Available at UBC Library

Kong, S. (2014). Popular media, social emotion and public discourse in contemporary China. Abingdon, Oxon; New York, NY: Routledge.

Kong, S. (2005). Consuming literature: Best sellers and the commercialization of literary production in contemporary China. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press.

Blumenfield, T., Silverman, H., SpringerLink (Online service), & SpringerLink ebooks – Humanities,Social Sciences and Law. (2013). Cultural heritage politics in China. DE: Springer New York. [Link]

Blumenfield, T. (2004). Commentary: “Walking marriages”. Anthropology News, 45(5), 15-15. doi:10.1111/an.2004.45.5.15. [Link]

UBC Library Research Guides

Arts, Media & Entertainment Industries

Learning Technologies

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Alison Bailey, Gu Xiong and Roger Boshier – Global Travellers, Visual Connections

April 10, 2010

BC China Scholars Forum Moving Words, Moving Images, UBC, April 9-10th, 2010. Webcast sponsored by Irving K. Barber Learning Centre. Panel includes:

Alison Bailey (UBC): “Google, Genealogy, & Coincidence: Tracing a Transnational Family
Roger Boshier (UBC): Shooting Wars: Bandit New Zealand Film-Makers Versus Chinese Minders
Gu Xiong (UBC): Becoming Rivers
Diana Lary (UBC): Chair

Select Articles and Books Available at UBC Library

Boshier, R., & University of British Columbia. Adult Education Research Centre. (1979). Adult and continuing education in New Zealand: 1851-1978, a bibliography. Vancouver: Adult Education Research Centre, Faculty of Education, University of British Columbia.

Boshier, R. (1980). Towards a learning society: New Zealand adult education in transition. Vancouver, B.C: Learning Press.

Boshier, R., Canada. Solicitor General Canada, University of British Columbia. Faculty of Education, & Institute for Research and Study in Prison Education. (1983). Education inside: Motives for participation in prison education programmes. Vancouver: Faculty of Education, University of British Columbia.

Boshier, R. (1976). A bibliography of research conducted by adult educators in the pacific northwest: Research completed July 1, 1973 to December 31, 1976. Vancouver, B.C: Standing Committee on Research, Northwest Adult Education Association.

UBC Library Research Guides

Education

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David Luesink, Grace Mak, Wing On Lee and Zhongping Chen – Knowledge and Transnationalism

April 9, 2010

BC China Scholars Forum Moving Words, Moving Images, UBC, April 9-10th, 2010. Webcast sponsored by Irving K. Barber Learning Centre. Panel includes:

Zhongping Chen (UVic): Kang Youweis Activities in Canada and Transpacific Mobility of Chinese Reformism: A Historical Reexamination
David Luesink (UBC): Making Medicine Equivalent: Missionaries and English-Chinese Lexicography, 1850-1967
Grace Mak (CCR) & Wing On Lee, Knowledge Transfer: The Development of Comparative Education in China
Anna Belogurova (UBC): Chair

Barber Learning Centre.

Select Articles and Books Available at UBC Library

Chen, Z. (. o. h., & Ebrary Academic Complete (Canada) Subscription Collection. (2011). Modern china’s network revolution: Chambers of commerce and sociopolitical change in the early twentieth century. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press. [Link]

Chen, Z. (2007). Ai guo qing guan yu qian. Hangzhou: Zhejiang gu ji chu ban she.

Chen, Z. (2011). The may fourth movement and provincial warlords: A reexamination. Modern China, 37(2), 135-169. doi:10.1177/0097700410391964. [Link]

Chen, Z. (2004). Building the Chinese diaspora across Canada: Chinese diasporic discourse and the case of Peterborough, Ontario. Diaspora, 13(2-3), 185-210. doi:10.1353/dsp.2008.0000. [Link]

UBC Library Research Guides

Chinese Studies

Chinese Canadians

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Barbara Metcalf – Being Muslim in India: A Singer, a Madman, and a Schoolgirl in their own Words

April 8, 2010

Hosted by the Asian Studies department, as part of the 2010 Virani Lecture Series in Islamic Studies, one of the most important directions in religious studies over recent decades has been an emphasis on the lived experience of those who participate in any given transcendent tradition that includes such domains of life as ritual, worship, and sacred authority. This approach invariably brings home the extraordinary diversity of ways of being part of any sacred tradition. Nonetheless, outsiders often attribute to Islamic sacred texts singular meanings and absolute authority as, indeed, do some Muslim ideologues themselves. In contrast, this talk explores the value of a more contextual approach to understanding engagement with Islamic texts and symbols, and provides examples from three different parts of the Indian subcontinent in three different centuries. The talk introduces an Isma`ili poet who flourished 600 years ago in the northwestern area of the subcontinent; an ex-soldier in colonial central India; and, finally, a young Bengali college girl affiliated with a Jama`at Islamic organization in todays Bangladesh. Webcast Sponsored by the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre.

Biography of Speaker

Barbara Metcalf is the Alice Freeman Palmer Professor of History at the University of Michigan and Professor Emeritus History at the University of California, David. She is a specialist in the history of South Asia, especially the colonial period, and the history of the Muslim population of India and Pakistan.

Selected Books Available at UBC Library

Metcalf, B. D., & Metcalf, T. R. (2006). A concise history of modern India. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. [Link]

Metcalf, B. D. (2004). Islamic contestations: Essays on Muslims in India and Pakistan. New York: Oxford University Press. [Link]

Metcalf, B. D. (1996). Making Muslim space in north America and Europe. Berkeley: University of California Press. [Link]

UBC Library Research Guides

Book, Theatre and Film Reviews

History

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Neil Safier – Measuring the New World

April 6, 2010

In collaboration with the UBC Bookstore, the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre presents Dr. Neil Safier as part of Celebrate UBC Authors. Prior to 1735, South America was largely terra incognita to many Europeans. But that year, the Paris Academy of Sciences sent a joint French and Spanish mission to the Spanish American province of Quito (in present-day Ec-uador) to study the curvature of the Earth at the Equa-tor—an expedition that would put South America on the map and in the minds of Europeans for centuries to come. Join us as Neil Safier places this particular scien-tific endeavor in the larger context of early modern print culture and the emerging intellectual category of scientist as author, from Measuring the New World. Webcast sponsored by the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre.

Select Articles Available at UBC Library

Safier, N., & Ebrary Academic Complete (Canada) Subscription Collection. (2008). Measuring the new world: Enlightenment science and South America. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. [Link]

Safier, N. (2014). The tenacious travels of the torrid zone and the global dimensions of geographical knowledge in the eighteenth century. Journal of Early Modern History, 18(1-2), 141-172. doi:10.1163/15700658-12342388. [Link]

UBC Library Research Guides

Economics

History of Science and Medicine

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