Citizen Science: New Challenges for Information Studies

November 8, 2016

citizen-science_talk

As part of the 44th Annual Conference of the Canadian Association of Information Science (CAIS), Jennifer Preece, Professor of the College of Information Studies at University of Maryland will be hosting a discussion about the new challenges for Information Studies in this period, known as the anthropocene. Humans are now having a profound influence on the planet, changing the atmosphere we breathe and reshaping the earth’s surface, thereby triggering species extinction at an alarming rate.

Information Studies professionals and students can have a profound influence on the data that is collected, how it is stored, retrieved and communicated with citizens and communities. We have a responsibility to help to heal our planet by raising awareness and triggering action. This talk challenges researchers, practitioners, teachers and students to lead the way in shaping a sustainable future. We can change information processes and technology, raise awareness, and engage citizens to contribute to science and their own communities by becoming “citizen scientists”.

Speaker:

preece_jenny_fixed Jennifer Preece, co-author of Interaction Design: Beyond Human Computer Interaction (4th Edition, 2015), helped to define research on online communities through her book Online Communities: Designing Usability, Supporting Sociability, 2000. Her current research focuses on information processes and technology for supporting citizen and environmental science; with an emphasis on community participation for collecting biodiversity data. Preece was dean of the College of Information Studies – Maryland’s iSchool for ten years from 2005 – 2015. Click here for further information about her career.

Event Details

When: November 9, 2016 12:00-1:00 p.m.

Where: Irving K. Barber Learning Centre, Dodson Room (Room 302)

congress_2016_badge_en

For more information about the CAIS conference, click here.

Read More | No Comments

Remembrance Day Speaker Series and Display

November 4, 2016

Remembrance Day Banner

The Rare Books and Special Collections has sponsored a series of talks in honour of Remembrance Day. The talks will all be held in the Lillooet Room (301) of the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre.

Tragic Bravery: Canada and the Battle of Hong Kong

When: November 4, 2016 12:00-1:30 p.m.

Speaker: Cameron Cathcart, President of the Royal United Services Institute – Vancouver Society (RUSI) and director of Vancouver’s Remembrance Day ceremonies at Victory Square

A trench bridge (World War I 1914-1918 British Press photograph collection, BC_1763_0955)

When asked if he thought the British Colony of Hong Kong could be defended against an invasion by the Japanese in 1941, Winston Churchill replied, “not the slightest chance”. This prediction forms the background to the fatal decision by Ottawa 75 years ago to send Canadian troops into the maelstrom that became known as the Battle of Hong Kong. As the 75th anniversary of the Battle of Hong Kong approaches, Cameron Cathcart will provide an overview of the battle, its aftermath, and delve into the personal lives of the brave Canadians whose lives were changed forever.

Canada’s Secret Sailors: Asian Crewmen and Canadian Vessels in the Indo-Pacific Theatre

When: November 8, 2016 12:00-1:30 p.m.
Speaker: Clifford J. Pereira, FRGS, Independent researcher, curator, and museum consultant

Based on research gathered over the last two years from national, provincial, and naval archives in Canada, Australia, and the U.K, Clifford J. Pereira will tell the forgotten story of hundreds of non-resident Asian seamen on vessels of the Canadian Pacific Railway deployed by the British Admiralty in the Pacific and Indian Oceans during the First World War.

Remembering the Great War with Canadian Writers and Artists

Sailors and Chinese labourers abroad the Empress of India (Chung Collection, CC_PH_02426)

When: November 10, 2016 12:00-1:30 p.m.
Speaker: Sherrill Grace, OC, FRSC, Professor Emerita of English and University Killam Professor

While Canada has been surprisingly low key about commemorating the Great War since 2014, we do have a wealth of artistic material that does important work in reconstructing and remembering the war. Dr. Sherrill Grace will consider how Canada remembers the war, and why it is important to do so, focusing on works by Canadians writing about the war from a late-20th century perspective.

In conjunction with the talks, a special display, Empires and Empresses at War, will be featured in RBSC’s Chung Collection exhibition room from November 4-November 30, 2016. The display, curated by Clifford J. Pereira, with curatorial assistance from Katie Sloan, showcases the importance of Canadian shipping vessels and the role of Asians and Asian-Canadians serving on Canadian vessels during World War I.

For more information, please contact Rare Books and Special Collections at 604 822-2521 or rare.books@ubc.ca.

The talks are free and open to the public.

Read More | No Comments

The Resonance Prism: Canadian Graphic Scores of the 21st Century

November 1, 2016

Graphic Scores Banner

Canadian composer Howard Bashaw’s sound-art performance installation The Resonance Prism was premiered in 2014 in a concert event entitled Sound Space Architecture in the University of British Columbia’s Centre for Interactive Research on Sustainability. Performers were required to both realize the specific material presented in the score and generate imaginative, inspired improvisations. The chosen venue functioned metaphorically as a prismatic enclosure, refracting and transforming light into complex and layered dimensions of color, time and sound. With this work, Bashaw abandons the constraints of traditional music notation for innovative possibilities inherent within graphic notation and visual symbols. The viewer is invited to experience this collision between music and art and to imagine the translation of this graphic score into sound.

The Resonance Prism contains ten contrasting sequenced movements that are each separated in the form of a graphic collage, where the conductor combines and recombines a range of components during the performance through layering and evolving. Accompanying each collage is a visual statement that is projected during the performance and viewed simultaneously by the performers and the audience. These images facilitate the performance and evokes various sonic images in the minds of the audience, creating a dynamic engagement between the conductor, the audience, and the performers.

Artist’s Statement- Howard Bashaw

“Although not new, ‘sound, space and architecture’ certainly endures as an alluring compositional challenge. I began by imagining the atrium as an enormous prism; one that reflects natural light (metaphorically speaking) into new broad, successive regions: the first containing various manifestations of colour and harmony, and the second, various manifestations of rhythm and pattern. The score is designed specifically to inspire more so than to prescribe, and therefore takes form as ten full-colour, highly-detailed graphic collages. It uses specific pitch-color correlations throughout, and, in extension, incorporates the natural spectrum as the fundamental, organizing principle for the entire work. The ensemble is divided into three groups: the background source spectra (electronics); the middle-ground transitional spectra (percussion and electric guitar), and the foreground antiphonal spectra (three spatialized choirs: winds, brass and strings). The conductor functions as a dynamic collaborator, interpreting and shaping the wood anew with every performance.”

Graphic Scores

Bashaw shows how art and music are colliding in the 21st century with the use of musical notations in his graphic scores. Artists and musicians can now experiment with musical notations to create beautiful visual scores as modern works of art. This becomes a performance installation that provides a different experience to the audience than the traditional concert style performance.

American Musicological Society

The exhibition coordinates with the American Musicological Society‘s joint conference with Society for Music Theory held at the Sheraton Vancouver Wall Centre Hotel. The AMS was founded in 1934 as a non-profit organization to advance “research in the various fields of music as a branch of learning and scholarship”. In 1951, the Society became a member of the American Council of Learned Societies. Today, the society currently has 3,500 members and 1,000 institutional subscribers from forty different nations.

The American Musicological Society and the Society for Music theory bring together academics, graduate students and other professionals specializing in musicology and music theory. This joint conference marks the largest single gathering of participants in the field of music and humanities in the world this year. This conference marks the eightieth-second meeting for the AMS and thirty-ninth annual event for the SMT. The event will provide attendees an opportunity to a wider network, share knowledge, and explore new directions in music research and practice. The event has scheduled over 350 presentations, a number of large performances, small meetings, receptions, and other exciting events.

Register: Registration rates for regular members before October 28th are $135 and $75 for members who are students or retired. Non-member registration fees are $225 and $135 for non-members who are students or retired.

The exhibition will take place from Tuesday, November 1st to December 28th, 2016.

UBC Library Research Guides

Music

Loading…

Read More | No Comments

SLAIS Welcomes Archivist Anne Lindsay as Speaker for 2017 Colloquium

November 1, 2016

The School of Library, Archival and Information Studies is pleased to welcome Anne Lindsay, Access and Research Archivist for the NCTR, as a speaker in the iSchool’s Winter 2017 Colloquium program. She is speaking Wednesday, January 18, from 12:00 p.m. to 1:00 p.m. on the topic of “Beyond Jenkinson: Authority, provenance, and Arrangement in a Complex Digital Collection at the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation.”

Event Details

The talk will be given in the Dodson Room (Room 302), 3rd floor of the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre. Registration is not necessary and the talk is open to all interested members of the community. Light refreshments will be served.

Read More | No Comments

One Asia Forum Talk Series: Tributary Twilight and the Global Modern: Lost Visions of Qing-Chosŏn Relations in the Late Nineteenth Century

November 1, 2016

joshua-van-lieu-1-768x461

Chosŏn and Qing discussions of their relationship from the mid-1870s to the early 1880s suggest strategic understandings of existing institutions and their limitations as informed by the rapidly changing geopolitical, economic, and technological geographies of the day. Indeed, the debates of this period produced a new vision of the Qing-Chosŏn relationship that would have eliminated large swaths of tributary practice in an effort to enable Chosŏn to participate in the currents of the global modern on its own terms and thereby become a strong albeit junior partner of the Qing Empire in world affairs. This future of bounty and vitality, however, was to become a vision doubly lost, first by virtue of Qing military occupation and political interventions and then again through generations of occidentalist elision in the fields of history and IR alike. This paper recovers this vision with particular attention to its embrace of the global modern as a move toward a critical pluralism that creates disciplinary dialogues between history and critical IR. This is part of One Asia Forum’s Talk Series which will also feature guest speaker Professor Joshua Van Lieu from LaGrange College.

one-asia-forum-talk-sires-768x427

Event Details

Date and Time: November 17, 2016 4:00-6:00 pm

Where: Irving K. Barber Learning Centre Room 461

About the speaker: Dr. Van Lieu is a historian of early modern and modern East Asian politics, thought, and international relations. He received his doctoral degree from the University of Washington in the histories of Chosŏn Korea and Late Imperial China. Having served as assistant editor and book review editor of The Journal of Korean Studies, Dr. Van Lieu currently is an assistant professor and the Curriculum Director for Asian Studies at LaGrange College. He has published on nineteenth-century Qing-Chosŏn tribute politics, the historiography of reform movements in late Chosŏn Korea, the roles of state Guanti cults in Ming, Qing, and Chosŏn narratives of state legitimacy, and critical approaches to historical international relations.

This event is open to public.

Read More | No Comments

Salon Series 2016/17: Great Onnagata Roles in Kabuki Dance

November 1, 2016

TomoeArts will be screening a series of full live video performances from their Shôchiku’s Kabuki Meisakusen Series at the I. K Barber Learning Centre. The performances feature several talented onnagata (female role) actors such as Nakamura Jakuemon IV (1920-2012) and Bandô Tamasaburô. All screenings will be held at the I. K Barber Learning Centre in Chilcotin Room, room 256.

Sumidagawa: The Sumida River

When: Monday October 17,2016 salonsumidagawa 7:00-8:30 pm

The first screening is the moving dance play Sumidagwa (The Sumida River), featuring Kiyomoto style music and was first premiered in 1919. The performance follows a desperate woman from Kyôto searching for her lost son. Her journey brings her to the banks of the Edo’s Sumida River where she encounters a boatman to take her across the river in search for her son. This role, played by Nakamura Jakuemon IV, is considered one of the most challenging female roles in kabuki.

Akoya-The Courtesan Akoya

When: Monday January 23, 2017 7:00-8:30 pm

Akoya is a scene from the puppet play Dan no Ura Kabuto Gunki which first premiered in 1732 and was later restaged as a kabuki play. This scene, originally known as the “Koto Torture Scene”, shows Shigetada questioning the courtesan Akoya on where her lover, the defeated Heike warrior Kagekiyo, is. Shigetada forces Akoya to answer his questions while she plays various traditional Japanese instruments such as the koto, shamisen and kokyû (lap fiddle). The actor who plays Akoya requires years of special training to be able to play all three musical instruments on stage for this performance.

Ninin Dôjôji-The Two Maidens at the Dôjô Temple

When: Monday March 13, 2017 7:00-8:30 pm

This performance shows the two-dancer version of the famous play, Musume Dôjôji, where the double spirit of Kiyohime comes to the Dôjô temple as shirabyôshi dancers, Hanako and Sakurako. Their jealous serpent-selves are revealed as they destroy the bell that once hid their lover who ran away from them.

Tomoe (pronounced toh-moh-ay) Arts is a company based in Vancouver, Canada that promotes, teaches, and performs nihon buyoh or Japanese classical dance. They also create and present performances incorporating the forms and aesthetics of Japanese traditional performing arts. Visit TomoeArts to learn more.

All entrance is free and there will be English commentary provided at all recordings. The nearest parking for the I. K Barber Learning Centre are the Rose Garden and North Parkades. Parking at UBC is $7 after 5pm. Find other parking on campus here.

Read More | No Comments

Staying Healthy for Heart and Stroke: What can Your Genes and Proteins Tell You?

November 1, 2016

A Life Sciences Institute Public Talk

Join us for a free discussion with a panel of experts who will explain what personalized medicine can tell you about your potential for heart health issues, and how doctors and researchers in British Columbia are collaborating to identify your risks, detect early warning signs and deliver individualized treatments. Learn how implementation of personalized medicine into BC healthcare can change clinical practice, improve health outcomes, and reduce health costs. This event will include a brief presentation from each panelist, followed by Q & A with the audience.

When: Tuesday, November 15, 2016

Time: 6-8 pm

Location: The Orpheum Annex- 823 Seymour Street, Vancouver BC

Panelists:

Dr. Andrew Krahn, Sauder Family and Heart and Stroke Foundation Chair in Cardiology

Dr. Andrew Penn, Director, Stroke Rapid Assessment Unit, Victoria General Hospital

Dr. Filip Van Petegem, Professor, UBC Department of Biochemistry & Molecular Biology

The Talk will be moderated by Elaine Yong, Senior Communications Specialist, Media Relations, for Providence Healthcare & hosted by Dr. Pieter Cullis, Director, UBC Life Sciences Institute.

This is a free event and walk-ins are welcome. However, space is limited so please click here to register.

For more information on heart health, please visit the Heart and Stroke Foundation website. For those interested the discussion document entitled Roadmap for Bringing Personalized Medicine to British Columbians is available for download here {PDF}.

Read More | No Comments

2016 code4libBC Unconference

October 21, 2016

Event Details

What: It’s a 2 day unconference! A participant-driven meeting featuring lightning talks in the mornings, breakout sessions in the afternoons, with coffee, tea and snacks provided. Lightning talks are brief presentations which are typically 5-10 minutes in length on topics related to library technologies. Breakout sessions are an opportunity to bring participants together in an ad hoc fashion for a short, yet sustained period of problem solving, software development and fun.

When: December 1 & 2, 2016

Where: UBC Irving K. Barber Learning Centre, Dodson Room

Who: A diverse and open community of library developers and non-developers engaging in effective, collaborative problem-solving through technology regardless of their department or background.

Why: Why not? code4libBC is a group of dynamic library technology practitioners throughout the province who want to build new relationships as much as develop new software solutions to problems.

Cost: $30, please click here to register for this event.

Code of Conduct: As a Code4Lib event, we adhere to the Code4Lib Code of Conduct, which seeks to provide a welcoming, harassment-free environment. Please see the Code of Conduct for further details or check out their past events here. For more information including schedule, talks and sessions sign up, please see the code4libBC wiki page.

Read More | No Comments

Reconciling Difficult Colonial Truths: Literature for Children and Youth

October 18, 2016

Given the legacy of 500 years of colonization, sharing and telling stories for children and young adults about difficult truths is important in moving forward towards reconciliation. As part of the journey, increased sensibilities and approaches are needed and give rise to many questions. How can children’s literature be decolonized and made appropriate for 21^st century learners? What role do writers, illustrators, teachers, teacher-librarians and children’s librarians play in the process? What ethical and respectful approaches are employed to decolonize the creation, dissemination and use of literature, especially about issues that readers find stressful and upsetting? Who should tell the stories? What are the risks and benefits of appropriation and commodification of cultural heritage? And what critical analysis skills are essential when promoting and sharing literature that is both historic and an ongoing expression of colonization? Join our School Library Day conversation, to hear from our panelists.

Event Details:

When: October 26, 2016 4:00-6:00 pm

Where: Irving K. Barber Centre Chilcotin Board Room (Room 256)

Panelists:

Maggie De Vries will talk as a writer and editor. She edited Fatty Legs and A Stranger at Home and wrote the teen novel, Rabbit Ears.

Gordon Powell will provide insights as a teacher, teacher-librarian and district principal for Aboriginal Education in Surrey about First Nations collections and integrating aboriginal content.

Julie Flett will speak about her work as a Cree-Metis Canadian author and illustrator and how she indigenizes picture books for children.

Arushi Raina will comment about apartheid and growing up as a teenager in South Africa and how that influenced her debut young adult novel, When Morning Comes.

Free event, featuring light food and refreshments.

Webcasts of past National School Library Day Events include:

“Video Games and Youth“

“Engaging Youth with Indigenous Materials in Libraries and Classrooms”

“Connecting Authors and Readers: Documenting Atlantic Canadian Books for Youth”

“The Place and Space for Canadian Children’s Literature in Our Lives and Libraries“

National School Library Day Colloquium is hosted by the UBC Education Library and UBC iSchool.

Read More | No Comments

BC Research Libraries Group & SFU Library’s “Open in Action”

October 14, 2016

sale

The BC Research Libraries Group and SFU Library are proud to present a morning program exploring the theme of “Open in Action”.

What Do We Want? (We’re Not Sure!) When Do We Want It? (Hard to Say!): Reconciling the Needs of Analysis and Advocacy in Scholarly-Communication Reform.

Speakers: Rick Andersen, Associate Dean for Collections and Scholarly Communication at the University of Utah, and President of the Society for Scholarly Publishing.

Reforming scholarly communication is a tough job, made tougher by factors that include the lack of unanimity among stakeholders as to what reform should look like (or whether it’s needed at all); the wide variety of needs and interests among the system’s stakeholders; the structural complexity of the system itself; the lack of unanimity as to what “open access” means; the heavy weight of tradition in academic practice; and the high level of emotion that inevitably accompanies discussion of these issues. The difficulty and complexity of the reform project suggest that analysis is needed, but the moral and emotional weight of the issues involved naturally lead us in the direction of advocacy instead—and advocacy and analysis are, unfortunately, natural enemies. In this session we will review salient aspects of the scholarly-communication landscape that make reform particularly challenging, some principles for addressing those challenges, and some possible mechanisms for applying these principles to bridge perspectives, including strategies for including the all-important authors’ voice.

Event Details

When: October 25, 2016 | 9:30-10:30 am

Where: Simon Fraser University Vancouver Campus, Room 7000

Open in Action: A Panel Discussion

Speakers: Juan Pablo Alperin, Assistant Professor, SFU Publishing; Gwen Bird, Dean of Libraries and University Librarian, SFU; Rajiv Jhanghiani, Department of Psychology, KPU.

Barrier-free access to research and resources is not just a nice idea: it is a necessity that is being supported with concrete actions by leaders in BC universities. Join us in conversation with individuals who are taking concrete actions that advance the concept of Openness in higher education, scholarship, and the community at large. These panelists will talk about initiatives they are involved in, such as those that support the development and use of open textbooks; investigate who uses open access journal articles and under what conditions; build infrastructure for scholarly publishing; address community needs for information
Specifically, our panelists will talk about how their work intersects with the idea of Open and what motivates them towards putting Open into action. Following short presentations, there will be a moderated discussion.

Event Details

When: October 25, 2016 | 11:00-12:00 pm

Where: Simon Fraser University Vancouver Campus, Room 7000

The events are open to all and free but seating is limited and registration is required. Click here to register.

International Open Access Week is a global, community-driven week of action to open up access to research. The event is celebrated by individuals, institutions and organizations across the world. For more information about International Open Access Week, please visit the website.

Read More | No Comments