Social Media Week 2012

Social Media Week 2012

September 11, 2012

 

Social Media Week is one of the world’s most unique global platforms, offering a series of interconnected activities and conversations on emerging trends in social and mobile media.  How do you attend?  Attendee Registration for the September 2012 conference will begin on August 28, 2012.  Over 90% of events hosted during SMW are free.  Where an event session has a fee associated with it, it will be clearly stated.  Here is a schedule of events happening around the city of Vancouver in 2012.  Social Media Week 2012 in Vancouver is organized and hosted by Socialized, who helps organizations to effectively socialize by equipping them to profit and prosper using social media.

The Irving K. Barber Learning Centre, in support of Social Media Week, is actively involved in promoting its programs and services using social media.  Here is a following of some of the social media that we are currently using right now.  Check it out!

  • Twitter is a platform for communication and information dissemination as well as social networking in real-time thus bearing similarity to status updates in Facebook.   @ikblc_ubc  @sba_bc  @UBCLearn

  • Facebook social networking service launched in February 2004, and as of June 2012, Facebook has over 955 million active users!   Come check out the IKBLC Facebook page and “like” us!

  • QR Codes are placed throughout IKBLC – “Virtual Guestbook” which will award a prize to those who sign into the online guest book and leave their thoughts and comments about the current exhibition at IKBLC.

 

  • YouTube – UBC and IKBLC-based lectures, seminars, conferences and performances, the Learning Centre selects programs to be recorded which communicates and promotes UBC-based lectures and events as part of the IKBLC and UBC Library’s outreach activitie

 

  • Photo-Sharing – Google’s Picasa is an image organizer and viewer for organizing and editing digital photos. It is also an integrated photo-sharing website and used to embed images on the carousel slide viewer for the IKBLC homepage.

 

  • WordPress blog has been used as a social media channel to promote timely news & events, encourage dialogue with users, and also to share UBC Library/IKBLC resources (such as the latest webcasts).

 

  • Foursquare is a combination of Twitter, gaming, and Yelp.  When a user “check-ins” to a location, options include pushing the checkin to Twitter, Facebook, or keeping it just for foursquare users.

 

  • Augmented Reality – After selecting a “layer” to launch on the application, one can see the digital information displayed on top of the camera view simply by holding the phone over a specific area.  By turning around, a user can point his or her phone toward the various “Points of Interest” (POI).

 

  • Event Brite Eventbrite provides an effective suite of smart technological fixes for the issue of event management. Facilitates dissemination of information via a custom event webpage with unique URL

  • LibraryThing is an online service to help people catalog their books easily. You can access your catalog from anywhere.  Because everyone catalogs together, LibraryThing also connects people with the same books, comes up with suggestions for what to read next.

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The Art and Science of Digital Reading, September 21, 2012

September 7, 2012

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Irving K. Barber Learning Centre Celebrates Culture Days 2012

September 7, 2012

Culture Days is a collaborative coast-to-coast-to-coast volunteer movement to raise the awareness,accessibility, participation and engagement of Canadians in the arts and cultural life of their communities — thousands of activity organizers self-mobilize at the grassroots level to present and coordinate free public activities that take place throughout the country over the last weekend of September each year.

The third annual Culture Days weekend will take place September 28, 29 and 30, 2012, and will feature thousands of free, hands-on, interactive activities that invite the public to participate “behind-the-scenes,” to discover the world of artists, creators, historians, architects, curators, designers and other creative people in their communities.

As part of the Robson Reading Series, the Learning Centre is pleased to host Raminder Sidhu for an author reading and book discussion on her latest book of fiction.  A courageous and timely novel, Tears of Mehndi explores the rich, complex and often heartbreaking lives of a tight-knit community in Vancouver’s Little India. Through the perspectives of several women whose lives intertwine over a generation, Raminder Sidhu deftly exposes the shrouded violence within the Indo-Canadian community, a difficult and often dissembled subject. Sidhu’s characters are women caught between two cultures, struggling to understand the traditions they are obliged to follow while still embracing and often welcoming the fundamentally different values of the West.

Through the perspectives of several women whose lives intertwine over a generation, Raminder Sidhu deftly exposes the shrouded violence within Canada’s South Asian community, a difficult and often dissembled subject. “Tears of Mehndi” captures the family struggles of South Asians in British Columbia, and tells the stories of women caught between tradition and western culture. Sidhu was born and raised in Mackenzie, BC.  Raminder Sidhu was born and raised in Mackenzie, BC, and now resides in Surrey, BC. She holds a B.Ed. from the University of British Columbia and a BBA from the University of the Fraser Valley. Tears of Mehndi is her debut novel. To attend this event, please register here.

Here are the complete listings of Culture Days events in British Columbia.

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Culture Days is just around the corner.

How will you celebrate during your Culture Days weekend?

Well, to start, we sure hope you plan to go to an official registered activity!

Tip: You can search for activities near you by entering your postal code, or use the clickable map to zoom in to see what’s happening your area. You can also search by keywords, date and time, or categories.

Here are 3 reasons and ways to get out there and make your Culture Days weekend an unforgettable one:

1.  Reconnect with an old friend or long lost love.
Know how to play an instrument, but haven’t tried in years? Never been to the local museum before? Always wanted to write a story or a script? Been meaning to take a pottery or dance class? Saw a show last month and wanna give the director your critique? Seize the day!

Get out during the Culture Days weekend and pay a visit to the local library, museum, gallery, park, theatre, cultural centre – whether there’s an official registered activity going on or not! Indulge yourself in an artistic or cultural experience. Join the local choir, register for an acting class, treat yourself to tickets to an upcoming show, or pick up that book of poetry or architecture that you’ve been eyeing.

Celebrate arts and culture by celebrating the artist or creator in you.

2.  Connect with real people in real life.
Spend Culture Days with friends you haven’t seen in a while. Round up a few people and let each person pick one activity for the group to go to together. Don’t forget to snap some photos and share them on Flickr or Facebook.

Going to a Culture Days activity can also be a great way to meet new interesting people. All official activities are interactive, so you can be sure that there will be lots of conversations happening.

Come to think of it, Culture Days is an awfully good time for couples to reconnect too. Shake up that Friday night or weekend routine – try something new. Surprise your partner with something he or she would never have thought of doing, or never thought you would do!

3.  Capture the action with your videos, photographs and words.
Capture the action. Culture Days is the largest public campaign to celebrate and promote cultural participation. Not only is it the largest, but we think it’s the first of its kind ever launched in Canada, and quite possibly the world. Document this massive grassroots movement. Let everyone know how your city or town rocked this Canada-wide celebration.

Post photos and videos, tweet, or write a story about what’s happening in your community during the Culture Days weekend. We’re on Facebook, YouTube, Flickr, and Twitter.

 

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Robson Reading Series 2012 Fall Line Up

September 4, 2012

Robson Reading Series Fall 2012 Lineup

This fall, the Robson Reading Series presents a vibrant season of readings from new books by authors from across Canada at the UBC Bookstore at Robson Square and the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre.
The season kicks off with readings from two gifted young novelists: Grace O’Connell with Magnified World and Ben Stephenson with A Matter of Life and Death or Something. Surrey resident Raminder Sidhu explores the lives of women caught between two cultures in her novel, Tears of Mehndi. CBC personality Grant Lawrence joins us with his acclaimed memoir, Adventures in Solitude, and Darren Bifford with his debut poetry collection, Wedding in Fire Country. Weyman Chan, a finalist for the 2008 Governor General’s Award for Poetry, presents his new book, Chinese Blue. Michael Kenyon and John Lent launch great new BC fiction. ReLit Award-winner, Dani Couture, reads from her novel,Algoma, alongside the hashtag-inspired microfictions of Julie Wilson’s Seen Reading.
In the 2012 finale, we present Alix Ohlin—“a writer who should be famous” according to the Globe and Mail—alongside the talented Toronto-based poets, Nyla Matuk and Matthew Tierney. All this and more at Vancouver’s longest-running reading series!
September 20
Readings by Grace O’Connell (Magnified World, fiction) and Ben Stephenson (A Matter of Life and Death or Something, fiction). Thursday, September 20 at 7:00pm, free. UBC Bookstore at Robson Square, 800 Robson Street. More info at www.robsonreadingseries.ubc.ca.
October 11
Readings by Darren Bifford (Wedding in Fire Country, poetry) and Grant Lawrence (Adventures in Solitude, nonfiction). Thursday, October 11 at 7:00pm, free. UBC Bookstore at Robson Square, 800 Robson Street. More info at www.robsonreadingseries.ubc.ca.
November 1
Readings by Michael Kenyon (A Year at River Mountain, fiction) and John Lent (The Path to Ardroe, fiction). Thursday, November 1 at 7:00pm, free. UBC Bookstore at Robson Square, 800 Robson Street. More info at www.robsonreadingseries.ubc.ca.
November 22
Readings by Dani Couture (Algoma, fiction) and Julie Wilson (Seen Reading, fiction). Thursday, November 22 at 7:00pm, free. UBC Bookstore at Robson Square, 800 Robson Street. More info at www.robsonreadingseries.ubc.ca.
December 13
Readings by Nyla Matuk (Sumptuary Laws, poetry), Alix Ohlin (Inside, fiction) and Matthew Tierney (Probably Inevitable, poetry). Thursday, December 13 at 7:00pm, free. UBC Bookstore at Robson Square, 800 Robson Street. More info at www.robsonreadingseries.ubc.ca.
Since 2008, the Robson Reading Series has presented afternoon readings at the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre. We are proud to announce that the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre has recently come on board as a full partner in the organization of the Robson Reading Series. We will host two afternoon events in Fall 2012:
September 28
Reading by Raminder Sidhu (Tears of Mehndi, fiction). Friday, September 28 from 3:00-4:00pm, free. Lillooet Room (301) of the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre, UBC. More info at www.robsonreadingseries.ubc.ca.
October 30
Reading by Weyman Chan (Chinese Blue, poetry). Tuesday, October 30 from 3:30-4:30pm, free. Chilcotin Room (256) of the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre, UBC. More info at www.robsonreadingseries.ubc.ca.
The Robson Reading Series gratefully acknowledges the financial support of the Canada Council for the Arts, UBC Bookstore, UBC Library and the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre. Refreshments at Robson Square courtesy of Peake of Catering.
For more information, visit us online at www.robsonreadingseries.ubc.ca or find us on Facebook andTwitter (#ikblcrrseries).
Contact:
Crystal Sikma
robson.readingseries@ubc.ca
604-822-6453

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Weyman Chan – Chinese Blues at Chilcotin Room, IKBLC, October 30, 3.30pm

September 3, 2012

Drawing on more than two thousand years of ancient Chinese tradition that present diverse philosophical modes of being, whether it be the spiritual teachings of Kong Zi or Lao Tzu, the military dicta of Sun Tzu or the complex sensibilities expressed by poets such as Ssu-ma Hsiang-ju, Li Bai, Du Fu and Wang Wei in the wake of a tumultuous imperial government, Weyman Chan restates these concerns of the past while addressing other “first world problems” in our own contemporary era.

In Chinese Blue, the poet “character” sifts through the earth’s long history of geological layering and forgetting, grappling with the perpetual fragmentation of identity. The poet struggles with the prospect of any inky blots that suggest the finished work of a creator, subject to expediencies—ambition, romance, betrayal—that leave us flawed and human, taking the reader on a spiritual quest burdened by an endless sea of flotsam.

In a stoic attempt to reconcile biological drives with a stance of non-presence and to find a place beyond “perpetual worry” where he can accept ancestral mistakes while tentatively channelling the voices of advertising that condition our vernacular and massage our minds—offering a cliché happy ending to what remains of our physical existence—the poet finds himself wading through jazzily visionary delineations of the modern city, numbed and soundly crushed between “the word and the thing.”

Here is Weyman Chan at his most fiercely ironic, tracing a lineage he interprets subconsciously and through the intricacies of its raw genetic material, with keenly biting language that echoes the rhythms of Qu Yuan in contemplation of his own mortality beside the flowing waters of impermanence:

I would prefer to jump into the river and be entombed in the stomachs of fishes than to bow while purity is defiled by vulgar pestilence.

To register for this event, please find here.

“Interwoven like richly suggestive translucent overlays of nerves, muscles, and bones, Chinese Blueilluminates the forces of fathering, masculinity, Chinese heritage, and global commerce scripting a body struggling to resist and redefine its source codes. The text hovers between the seen and the imagined, interrogating both, as it runs a tight line from the jazz of a blue toy piano to the blues of life in oil-greedy Alberta to a Guangdong blue-jeans factory to Dad’s blue cocoon. This poetry vividly sounds the cross-currencies and necessary entanglements of the lyric in times of famine, polar meltdown, carbon credits and the massive production of media trivia.”
—Meredith Quartermain

“There are many things in the world to love. Weyman Chan’s poetry is one. Chinese Blue is a virtuoso performance by a poet who looks deep inside himself, others, and the distant rumblings of the world. He pronounces disquiet over their wordings—Lady Gaga, Arab Spring, G.I. Joe, Kurt Cobain, Two Small Men With Big Hearts and all the other brandings we are forced to carry in our hearts. Chan paints with the eyes of classical Chinese painter, whose brush strokes carry many meanings.”
—George Melnyk

“These poems are marvels of the gone but ever-sighted, every moment in/out simultaneous. Read Chinese Blue in your hover-alls. Peel the world true-gappy.”
—Gerald Hill

“Jackson Pollock, mahjonggroceries, Patty Hearst, Joplin and Monk, Wang Wei (albeit as insect), Robert Kroetsch andNHLer Dion Phaneuf (as a Flame)—populate this poet’s wide world that starts from his Calgary home. A kind of collage familiar to my own hyphenated-Canadian’s tale. Decades of cultural markers come in lush poems back-lit with shimmery quiet that can veritably glow in his respect towards Chinese immigrant parents. With textured, varied diction, Chan tracks imagination’s lyrical moments and its vivid disjunctive trajectories. His fluid, orally driven abandon and heartbeat rambling lines form linear narratives that, while reassuring, can abruptly shift gears at unusual challenging perceptions. Equally, Chan’s gentle lyrical pulse propels energetic shifts that capture and confer due attention to the discontinuous story that forms our quotidian. This is art as hopeful act with a big heart—exemplified in poems about the father, free of self-flexing sentimentality.”
—Gerry Shikatani

Place: Chilcotin Boardroom (Room 256), Irving K. Barber Learning Centre, 1961 East Mall, V6T 1Z1
Time:  Tuesday October 30, 2012, 3.30pm to 4.30pm

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For more information about this event, please contact Allan Cho

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Dr. Kwok-Chu Lee Recognition Ceremony

August 31, 2012

 

Webcast sponsored by the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre and hosted by Richmond Public Library. Dr. Kwok-Chu Lee has been a good friend and strong supporter of Richmond Public Library since 1995. His generosity has ranged from donating books and money to conducting many successful informational seminars and fundraising activities. In 2011, Dr. Lee donated 47,000 Chinese language books. This new donation is described as a “national treasure.” To date, the total value of his cash and book donations exceeds $1.53 million. In this ceremony, Richmond Library honoured Dr. Lee for his generous donation and acknowledged his extraordinary contributions to Richmond Public Library.

 

UBC Library Research Guides

Library, Archival, and Information Science

Learning Through Literacy and Technology

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Two Minute Small Business Accelerator (SBA) Introduction

August 29, 2012

Get to know the new Small Business Accelerator website by watching this brief introductory video that explains what information can be found on the SBA, and how best to navigate the site.
Business success depends on obtaining access to reliable information. The Small Business Accelerator is your gateway to freely available business information, education, and assistance that is both current and trustworthy.

Visit us as http:www.sba-bc.ca or follow @sba_bc on Twitter!

The Small Business Accelerator is an Irving K. Barber Learning Centre Initiative.

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Smart Business, Small Business: An SBA Speaker Session (Okanagan)

August 29, 2012

This is a full recording of the Small Business Accelerator event, Smart Business, Small Business which took place at the University of British Columbia’s (UBC) Okanagan Campus in Kelowna on Wednesday, October 19th, 2011. The lecture features three compelling speakers who gave short talks and answered audience questions:

• Laurel Douglas, CEO Women’s Enterprise Centre. Talk included an overview of the small business sector in BC, including some trends and issues.
• Norine E Webster, Adjunct Instructor, Faculty of Management – UBC Okanagan. Talk offered practical insights on “Services – 5 tips in effective marketing and delivery of customer services and service products.
• Scott Coleman, Co-Founder FunCore Strength and Conditioning. Scott shared practical tips and lessons-learned from his start-up experience.

The series was a celebratory event marking the Small Business Accelerators first year of service and was also held in conjunction with Small Business Week, organized by the Business Development Bank of Canada. For more information about the speakers and their talks go to the event page:http://www.sba-bc.ca/biztalkOkanagan

Speaker Biographies

Laurel Douglas is passionate about empowering women to their business success. Since 2004, Douglas has been CEO of Women’s Enterprise Centre. Under her leadership, Women’s Enterprise Centre has become the go-to place for women in BC who are starting, purchasing or growing their business. Women’s Enterprise Centre fills gaps to provide business loans, training, mentoring programs, business advice and resources to women business owners across the province.

Norine Webster has been an Adjunct Faculty member at UBC’s Okanagan campus since 2008, teaching marketing, management and business analysis courses at both the graduate and undergraduate levels. As an independent consultant with Webster Consulting, Norine assists small and large companies with business strategies, marketing plans, new product launches, and customer service.

Scott Coleman is a lifetime sport devotee and is a co-founder of FunCore Strength and Conditioning. Offering unique training concepts backed by extensive knowledge in the trait, the brand has seen steady growth throughout its first year and continues to expand throughout the Okanagan Valley. Presently, Coleman attends UBCO and is in his final year pursuing a Bachelor of Management degree.

UBC Library Research Guides

Current Awareness for Business Researchers

Industry &  Market Research

Marketing

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Learning Centre to enhance space and services

August 28, 2012

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Open Access Week, October 31-November 1, 2012

August 21, 2012

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