By Jill Henderson on August 14, 2025
Browsing UBC Open Collections, one can find several instances of comparison between Western Canadian mountain ranges and the Swiss Alps. This postcard book, for example, labels the Rockies as the “Switzerland of America”. 20 Beautiful View of the Canadian Pacific Rockies, The Road through the Switzerland of America (Uno Langmann Collection, circa 1920s) Like the […]
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By Jill Henderson on July 31, 2025
As an institution, the library has experienced profound transformations across history. Shifts in technology, education, and social values mean that the library is no longer solely an institution of intellectual discovery, but one of leisure, recreation, and community engagement, too. UBC Open Collections holds many materials which map the history of the library, including catalogues […]
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By Jill Henderson on July 17, 2025
In Part 1 of our two-part series about British Columbia’s ghost towns, we explored an influential event in the province’s labour history: the 1935 Corbin Miners’ Strike. This week, we’re taking a look at Barkerville’s Chinatown, one of the first established Chinatown neighbourhoods in Western North America. While often historically omitted from B.C.’s ghost town […]
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By Jill Henderson on July 3, 2025
One of our most popular blog posts of all time examines the captivating story of northern British Columbia ghost town Anyox, a former company-owned mining community abandoned in 1935. Anyox, B.C. (early 1900s) This week, we bring you Part 1 in a two-part series exploring lesser-known British Columbia ghost town stories. To kick off the […]
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By Jill Henderson on June 19, 2025
Ephemera, by its very definition, was never meant to stick around. Defined as items that have been preserved despite the fact that they were not intended to be at their time of production, the term is used to describe commonplace paper objects like flyers, menus, event tickets, postcards, and more. Valentine’s card (1919) from the […]
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By Jill Henderson on May 9, 2025
In the 1960’s, tensions around free speech, civil rights, and the Vietnam War were growing at the University of California, Berkeley. Students were organizing politically and becoming increasingly emboldened in their expressions of outrage through civil disobedience. The 1960’s Berkeley protests represented the largest organized student demonstrations to date, drawing unprecedented numbers, producing tangible results, […]
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By Tianyi Fei on April 10, 2025
In the rich tapestry of cultural expressions, few narratives are as quietly impactful as that of Nüshu (女書, meaning “women’s writing” in Chinese). Nüshu is a syllabic script that was primarily used by Yao women in Jiangyong County, Hunan Province, China. For generations, this unique writing system allowed women to express their thoughts, emotions, and […]
Posted in Carousel, Digitizers' Blog, Kinesis, Language, The Ubyssey, Women | Read More | No Comments