The Discovery of Franklin’s Lost Ship

October 7, 2014

Webcast sponsored by the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre and hosted by alumni UBC and Vancouver Maritime Museum. In 1845, the two ships of the Franklin Expedition, HMS Erebus and HMS Terror, set sail from England on a mission to explore the Northwest Passage. The following year, the ships became trapped in ice and the entire crew was lost. The fate of Franklin’s crew and ships remained one of Canada’s greatest maritime mysteries until early this September when the Victoria Strait Expedition made the exciting discovery of one of the ships.

This talk is about the UBC alumni who were involved with the 2014 Victoria Strait Expedition. They will share stories about the search efforts and will provide insight about why the Franklin Expedition has captured the Canadian public’s imagination for more than 160 years.

Aaron Lawton, BSF’07, FRCGS – Expedition Leader One Ocean Voyager
Colin Bates, PhD’07 – Expedition Staff, Marine Ecologist
Jimmy Thomson, MA’14 – Journalist (appearing by video)

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Citizen Science: Information, Technology and People

October 7, 2014

Webcast sponsored by the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre and hosted by the School of Library, Archival, and Information Studies (SLAIS). Citizens have been informally contributing to science for hundreds of years. One of the best known modern examples is of sightings by bird watchers. The Christmas Bird Count, an annual national count in the USA, is one hundred years old and birdwatching activities date back to even earlier times in the UK and parts of Europe. This data informs scientific studies of bird migration and behavior, which in turn provide evidence of habitat loss, and changes in weather patterns.

Citizens contribute to many branches of science from astronomy, to biochemistry, hydrology, biodiversity, personalized medicine, and more. Increasingly digital devices including cell phones, sensors, cameras, databases and associated techniques for storing, retrieving, and communicating data, and many types of social media have been integrated into citizen science and other volunteer practices. In this talk Professor Preece discusses a range of citizen science and volunteer projects focusing on the design of the technologies that support them and suggest some best practices for designing and motivating citizens to use these technologies.

Speaker Bio

Professor Jennifer Preece is a Professor and Dean at the University of Maryland’s iSchool She has researched usability and sociability design issues in online communities. Currently she has several research projects that focus on motivating participation in citizen science. She authored or coauthored three high-impact books: Human-Computer Interaction (1994), On-line Communities: Designing Usability, Supporting Sociability (2000), Interaction Design: Beyond Human-Computer Interaction (2002, 2007, 2011, 2015).

Select Articles and Books Available at UBC Library

Sharp, H., Rogers, Y., & Preece, J. (2007). Interaction design: Beyond human-computer interaction. Chichester; Hoboken, NJ: Wiley. [Link]

Preece, J. (2000). Online communities: Designing usability, supporting sociability. New York: John Wiley.

Preece, J. (2001). Sociability and usability in online communities: Determining and measuring success. Behaviour & Information Technology, 20(5), 347-356. doi:10.1080/01449290110084683. [Link]

Preece, J. (2004). Online communities: Researching sociability and usability in hard to reach populations. AJIS: Australasian Journal of Information Systems, 11(2) doi:10.3127/ajis.v11i2.132. [Link]

UBC Library Research Guides

Learning Technology

Library Resources for Teaching and Learning

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Photo-Poetics / Photo-Politics: Visualizing Social Transformation

October 6, 2014

Webcast sponsored by the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre and hosted by by Centre A and the UBC Asian Canadian and Asian Migration Studies (ACAM) program.

This event was held on Thursday, October 16, 2014 at Centre A – 229 E. Georgia St., Vancouver, BC. The exhibition “Jim Wong-Chu: Photographs 1973–1981: People, Place, Politics” consists of nearly 100 black-and-white photographs taken by Jim Wong-Chu during the years he attended Emily Carr, then known as the Vancouver School of Art. The photographs personally selected by the artist from hundreds of shots he took during that period include works from his Pender Street East series, various community photos and protest images from the drive to save BBQ Pork, the democratization of Chinese Benevolent Associations, and the Quebec-Columbia Connector Freeway protests. This three week long exhibition coincides with the LiterAsian Festival of Pacific Rim Asian Canadian Writing and comes on the heels of Jim’s significant contribution of fonds to the UBC library.

Born in Hong Kong in 1949, Jim Wong-Chu 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.

Panelists:

Jim Wong-Chu, Founding Director of the Asian Canadian Writer’s Workshop

Jack Jardine, Film producer and Executive Director, SmartChange

Shelly Rosenblum, Curator of Academic Programs, Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery, UBC

Glenn Deer (moderator), Department of English, UBC

Relevant Books and Articles at UBC Library

Rosenblum, S., & Spark, B. (2002). A guide to lowering test scores. Leadership [H.W.Wilson – EDUC], 32(1), 30. [Link]

Deer, G., Scholars Portal Books: Canadian Electronic Library, & Canadian Publishers Collection. (1994; 1993). Postmodern Canadian fiction and the rhetoric of authority. Montreal; Buffalo: McGill-Queen’s University Press. [Link]

UBC Library Research Guides

English

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Open UBC Week – October 28-29, 2014

October 5, 2014

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Global Experience Fair

October 2, 2014

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5th Annual UBC Library/United Way Spelling Bee

October 2, 2014

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Youth, Pop Culture and Media, and Not Speaking Cantonese

September 26, 2014

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Michael Audain – Building on your Passions (Wesbrook Talks)

September 26, 2014

Webcast sponsored by the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre and hosted by alumni UBC and Wesbrook Village. This talk is second in the series of Wesbrook Talks, featuring arts supporter, Polygon Homes chairman and start an evolution campaign cabinet member, Michael Audain. Mr. Audain discusses how he started in the home building business, and about the influences that shaped his long, successful career and inspired his philanthropy.

Speaker Biography

Michael Audain, BA’62, BSW’63, MSW’65, LLD’14, OC, OBC, is Chairman of Polygon Homes Ltd., one of British Columbia’s leading home builders. The company has built over 23,000 homes in Metro Vancouver since he founded it in 1980, and received numerous awards for its integrity and building excellence. Mr. Audain, a fifth generation British Columbian, was educated at the University of British Columbia and the London School of Economics. He is a governor and past Chairman of the Business Council of British Columbia, a past President of the Urban Development Institute and a member of the UDI Hall of Fame. An active supporter of the arts, Mr. Audain is Chair of the Audain Art Museum and the Audain Foundation. He is past Chair of the National Gallery of Canada, the Vancouver Art Gallery, and the Vancouver Art Gallery Foundation, a past director of the National Gallery of Canada Foundation, and a former member of the British Columbia Arts Council.

Mr. Audain has been appointed to the Order of Canada and the Order of British Columbia. He has also been honoured with honorary degrees from four universities, the British Columbia Museums Association Distinguished Service Award, the Simon Fraser University President’s Distinguished Community Leadership Award, the Vancouver Biennale Philanthropy in the Arts Award, the Vancouver Mayor’s Arts Award for Philanthropy, the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts Medal, the Business for the Arts Edmund C. Bovey Award, the Queen’s Diamond and Golden Jubilee Medals and the Vancouver Board of Trade Community Leadership Award. He is also a Business Laureate of the British Columbia Hall of Fame. Married to Yoshiko Karasawa, Mr. Audain has two children and four grandchildren, all of whom reside in British Columbia.

Relevant Books and Articles at UBC Library

Audain, M. J., British Columbia. Provincial Commission on Housing Options, British Columbia Government EBook Collection, & British Columbia. Housing Policy Section. (1999). Housing policy and programs: Advances and activities since the provincial commission on housing options : What has happened since the provincial commission on housing options?. Victoria, B.C.: Housing Policy, Ministry of Municipal Affairs. [Link]

Sperling, J., Hall, M. H., Canada, I., & Canadian Public Policy Collection. (2007). Philanthropic success stories in Canada. Imagine Canada. [Link]

UBC Library Research Guides

Business Career Research

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Health Information Series – Autism Gets Personal: Emerging Therapies From the Interface of Genes and Environment

September 25, 2014

Learn about a University of British Columbia Life Sciences Institute (LSI) initiative that brings together research on genes, behaviour, brain function and gut microbes, with the aim of providing early diagnosis and individualized treatments for children with Autism.

Wednesday October 8, 2014, 6:00 – 8:00 p.m.
Alice MacKay Room, Lower Level
Central Library, 350 West Georgia St.

RSVP LSI Public Talks – October 8, 2014

6:00 PM – 8:00 PM
Alice McKay or Alma VanDusen & Peter Kaye Rooms, Lower Level
Central Library
350 West Georgia Street

Details of past LSI Public Talks are posted.

The Life Sciences Institute hosts the LSI Public Talks, a series of informal talks and networking that aim to help the public understand how our research has an impact on their lives. The 2014-2015 series focuses on personalized medicine and how the LSI faculty, staff and students are working to change clinical practice, improve health outcomes, and reduce health costs.

The LSI Public Talks are delivered in partnership with the Vancouver Public Library and UBC’s Irving K. Barber Learning Centre.

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Select Articles Available at UBC Library

Sun, Y., & Bamji, S. X. (2011). β-Pix modulates actin-mediated recruitment of synaptic vesicles to synapses. The Journal of Neuroscience : The Official Journal of the Society for Neuroscience, 31(47), 17123. [Link]

Brigidi, G. S., & Bamji, S. X. (2011). Cadherin-catenin adhesion complexes at the synapse. Current Opinion in Neurobiology, 21(2), 208-214. doi:10.1016/j.conb.2010.12.004. [Link]

Mills, F., Bartlett, T. E., Dissing-Olesen, L., Wisniewska, M. B., Kuznicki, J., Macvicar, B. A., . . . Bamji, S. X. (2014). Cognitive flexibility and long-term depression (LTD) are impaired following β-catenin stabilization in vivo. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 111(23), 8631-8636. doi:10.1073/pnas.1404670111. [Link]

UBC Library Research Guides

Medicine

Systematic Reviews and Search Methodologies

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World Poetry Canada International Peace Festival exhibition

September 24, 2014

The 4th Annual World Poetry Canada International Peace Festival returns to the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre, from October 6 to 26, 2014. The World Poetry Festival once again brings together international poets, Canadian and local multicultural poetry groups during this dynamic festival. A video presentation explains what the World Poetry festival is all about.

Each selected international poet will present their poetry, launch a book, present their film be featured at this exhibition at the Learning Centre.

This is a multi-site exhibition in the Metro Vancouver region. Partnership venues include the following:

October 6th-26th World Poetry Display at the University of British Columbia, Irving K. Barber Learning Centre. 1961 East Mall, Vancouver, BC V6T 1Z1 400 gift poems. Six display cases, 24 hour video feed, white board for logos.
October 11 Special Opening of World Poetry Vancouver 1-3 pm. Display: October 1-15th 75 gift poems. Youth section, Britannia Community Library, (VPL) 1661 Napier Street Vancouver, B.C. V5L 4X4
October 19 Opening Gala 1:30-4:30 pm. Simon Fraser University, Harbour Centre, 515 West Hastings Street, Room 7000. Vancouver, B.C. Canada V6B 5K3. Awards, reading, launches. October 19, 7-9 pm Dinner and social time.
October 22, 6:30-8:30 pm. New Westminster Public Library. 716 6th Street, New Westminster. BC. World Poetry Night Out celebrates 5 years! World Poetry Peace Poetathon Grand Celebration!
October 25, 10:30 am – 9:00 pm. UBC Learning Exchange, World Poetry Film Festival, Featuring Peace and Human Rights documentaries by young filmmakers from Canada, Afghanistan and India plus possible Worldwide Launch of the WP Literary Journal. Awards. Poetry Display. 100 gift poems. Peace Posters by Sattar Saberi.

For more information, please contact Allan Cho, curator of the Learning Centre exhibitions.

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