Love letters, coded postcards, photographs, glass lantern slides, Womyn’s Centre t-shirts, college photos from Iowa, dance cards and more. These are just some of the deeply personal records found in the Lesbian Collection at UBC Library Rare Books and Special Collections (RBSC), a new archival resource that captures nearly three centuries of queer history, from 1725 to 2012.
The archive preserves the stories of hundreds of lives lived in secret, on stage, with family and in communities living in Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom and France. It brings together personal correspondence, photographs, ephemera and other records that offer rare insight into the everyday experiences of lesbian, queer and gender-diverse people.
Photographs from the Lesbian Collection at RBSC.
As noted in the collection’s finding guide, available online, the Lesbian Collection includes materials from across LGBTQIA+ history and culture, relating to lesbian women, , drag kings and queens, activists, reformers and others we might today understand as having lived queer lives. These records document the many ways people have expressed their identities across time
“The collection takes an expansive view of gender and sexuality, pulling together materials that resonate with queer experiences, aesthetics and identities through the ages,” notes Amelia D., Archives and Reference Assistant at RBSC, who worked extensively to catalogue the collection. “All too frequently relegated to the margins of history and archives, love between women takes centre stage in the Lesbian Collection.”
Photograph from theLesbian Collection at RBSC depicting two women, with a French inscription that reads: “Nous nous aimerons…..” (“We love each other.”)
Several prominent historical figures are represented in the archive, including American political figure and activist Eleanor Roosevelt (1884-1962), American novelist and poet Gertrude Stein (1874-1946), American stage actor Charlotte Cushman (1816-1876), and Canadian teacher and poet Deborah Cottman (1728-1806). However, many researchers and scholars will find the greatest value contained within the records of everyday life, which document the experiences, relationships and communities of queer women.
“We have a responsibility to see everyone represented in our archival collections,” says Krisztina Laszlo, Archivist at RBSC, noting that until now, most of the queer-related materials in the library’s current holdings focus on the lives of men. “We owe it to the university and community to make everyone feel supported and represented. The Lesbian Collection fills so many gaps in our holdings.”
This week we are taking a dive into Open Collections to highlight more tips and tricks for doing research in UBC Open Collections.
This blog post covers some more advanced search techniques, so if you have not already, we strongly recommend you check out our previous blog posts on how to search Open Collections.
Content Warning: This blog post features items that may contain outdated, ableist, and derogatory language about blind, deaf and disabled people.
Those who read our previous blog posts on the Crane Library at UBC will know that Charles Allan Crane (1906-1965) was a student who attended UBC between 1931 and 1933, and made history as the first deafblind person to attend a Canadian university. Since we are coming up on the 2026 International Day of Deafblindness on June 27th, this seems like a fitting test case!
Person or Organization Metadata
For many items in Open Collections, especially images, there is a field called Person or Corporation where the names of significant people or organizations are listed.
For example this image of Charlie with Alexander Graham Bell includes the linked name: “Crane, Charles”
When we click on it, the link brings up everything else Open Collections tied to the same person or organization.
In this case only two images pop up.
This means we need to dig further and find some written sources.
Regular Search
If we do a regular search on Charlie using two variations of his name we find a lot of potential sources. A lot of this might be relevant but this is too many results to sort through! This is a common issue when researching people with generic first or last names.
So, let’s see if we can do a more precise search to find out what Charlie was up to while in Vancouver.
Advanced Full Text Searching
This is where background research becomes very important. Some pieces of info that are good to have before searching for a more obscure person are the basic facts of their life including name variations, where they lived and when they were born and died. For Charlie we know the following from biographies written about him.
Name(s): Charles Allan Crane (1605-1965)
Alternative Names: Often goes by “Charlie” or “Charlie Crane” with or without middle name Allan or Allen (if misprinted). Sometimes shortens Charles to “Ches.” when publishing journalistic articles
Place: Born in Ontario, lived in Nova Scotia, moved to BC in 1922 (17 years old). Attended UBC between 1931 and 1933, and spent the rest of his life in Vancouver. Contributed to the UBC student newspaper The Ubyssey
To do an advanced search on Charlie we would take the following steps:
You’ll notice that below the search there are some details of how the search syntax works to make searching more efficient, but we won’t be trying all of this in this blog post.
Build Your Search
For our search we will be searching variations of Charlie Crane’s name with an asterisk (*) where his middle name would be. In Open Collections this works as what is called a wildcard operator.
If we wanted to expand the search more we could select “Any of these words” or “All of these words” instead of “exact phrase”. But in this case we want only people with the first name Charles followed by the last name Crane.
Every time we add a new phrase to our search we also make sure “OR” is between them.
AND vs. OR
It’s important to make sure you choose the right option when picking between AND and OR. AND will give you a much smaller amount of results but can exclude too much, and OR will cast a wider net.
Under Limits I’ve chosen to limit the search to our digitized historical collections and limit the date to the years Charlie lived in British Columbia, 1922-1965. We can apply more filters later if needed
Search
Let’s hit search and see what we have!
After that we have a small collection of 13 results to sort through. We might have found the same items with a simpler search as well, but it was worth narrowing the results down.
Even with this narrower search, some of the results are about different people also named Charlie Crane. But when we click into some of the items we find some interesting things like this 1929 Legislative Report that cites his academic achievements at the BC School for the Deaf and Blind.
An article from the Ubyssey introducing him to his classmates.
If we wanted to find more on Charlie from here we could expand the search criteria to include a broader set of dates from his birth in 1905 to 2026 to find materials published about him after his death, or expand our search in new directions.
Conclusion
We hope this blog post was informative and we encourage you to try doing some searching yourself using some of these strategies for your own research. Let us know if you have any questions about advanced search that we can answer in future blog posts!
Carbin, C. F., & Smith, D. L. (1996). Deaf heritage in Canada: A distinctive, diverse, and enduring culture. McGraw-Hill Ryerson. Available for free courtesy of The Canadian Cultural Society for the Deaf.
Metadata is known as “data about data,” or descriptive information about an object to help make it discoverable and usable, among many other features. When scholarly material is deposited to cIRcle, the metadata is essential for making that content findable not only within Open Collections, but also on other UBC and non-UBC platforms, like Google and Google Scholar. Strong metadata is important for understanding the item and how it can be used and shared, ultimately maximizing the item’s full potential.
How Metadata Works
How items are discovered and retrieved from a search is largely dependent on the of metadata. For example, if you perform an advanced search in Open Collections for “Pike, Ian” as a Creator, all material in cIRcle that meets that criteria will be included in your search results.
cIRcle aims to meet broader established standards, guidelines, and practices to facilitate metadata interoperability across platforms, while still managing a schema that meets unique needs of UBC. In cIRcle’s Metadata Manual you will find some fields that capture UBC-specific information, such as Program, Degree, and Supervisor. Fields may also be controlled with pre-selected values to ensure consistent representation.
Providing robust and standardized metadata allows UBC and non-UBC search engines, digital repositories, and platforms to harvest, index, and store reliable and accurate information, along with provision of proper item citation. For example, the Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting (OAI-PMH) facilitates harvesting and indexing of cIRcle metadata by other discovery layers, which demonstrates the importance of interoperable metadata to facilitate greater discoverability.
Extending Discovery and Use of Scholarly Material via Metadata
The Theses Canada portal is a large publicly accessible collection consisting of theses and dissertations from approximately 70 Canadian universities, making it an important place to find Canadian academic research. LAC updates and populates their collection by using OAI-PMH to harvest cIRcle content and metadata. This also benefits cIRcle’s preservation efforts, and boosts the discovery of UBC’s graduate research more widely.
cIRcle had a major role in the FROGBEAR Project, which encompasses more than 1,500 items including material related to key sites of religious practice and knowledge in East Asia. Using the Open Collections API and harvesting metadata from cIRcle’s records helped build the project’s website. The project’s content is now discoverable and accessible on its own website, in addition to Open Collections. The harvested metadata was also used to create an interactive map tool and a custom search interface, among other website features.
Having multiple locations to find the outputs of research is beneficial. To achieve wider points of research discovery outside of UBC’s repositories, strong and interoperable metadata is required. This will help search engines, digital repositories, and other platforms harvest and index information so that users can access and use the material on those sites.
If you are a UBC faculty member, student, or staff interested in depositing your work to cIRcle, please review cIRcle’s Submissions page for more information or Contact Us.
Many thanks to guest blogger Amelia Dolbeare for contributing the below post! Amelia is a graduate student at the UBC School of Information and is currently an Archives and Reference Assistant with Rare Books and Special Collections Library.
[Kate Edwards to Mattie A. Pickens]. Lesbian collection. RBSC-ARC-1825-11-05-2
“Words are inadequate to express the joy that thrilled my heart upon the reception of the long looked-for letter from my sweet little lady love,” wrote Kate Edmonds, in January 1884. “When I love you so dearly—just a line penned by your fair hand will ever interest me […] For I assure you, my mad, wild, passionate love for you is no jesting matter.” Addressed to Kate’s “own precious darling,” Miss Mattie A. Pickens, this letter provides a window into a rather intimate exchange between two young women nearly 150 years ago.
Kate Edmonds’ letter to Mattie Pickens is just one of many records left behind by women who loved women that can be found in the Lesbian Collection at Rare Books and Special Collections. RBSC is thrilled to announce these and many more new acquisitions to the Lesbian Collection, made available to the public just in time for Vancouver’s Pride Week. From letters to photographs, from postcards to sheet music, the materials in the Lesbian Collection span nearly four centuries, encompassing a wide array of subjects. The collection takes an expansive view of gender and sexuality, pulling together materials that resonate with queer experiences, aesthetics, and identities through the ages.
The Lesbian Collection speaks to a sense of community, seeking to document queer lives across centuries. A t-shirt from the 1990s declaring “If I can’t dance I don’t want to be part of your revolution” finds its match in dance cards from a 1919 “Lesbian Reception.” A cryptic postcard asks, “If blue were red and red were blue, and you were I and I were you, and this world held but just us two, and you knew, nobody knew. Would you?” These objects and thousands more allow for a glimpse into queer cultures and signifiers of the past, their authors’ voices echoing forward into our present.
While the bulk of the material in the Lesbian Collection comes from everyday women, there are a handful of more recognizable names and faces. The collection includes over 150 letters belonging to British suffragette Mary Blathwayt (1879-1961) and her family, as well as letters written by the American actress Charlotte Cushman (1816-1876). Eleanor Roosevelt makes an appearance photographed alongside dancer Mayris Chaney, and Sarah Bernhardt stares out from a pair of postcards. These postcards are just two out of over 1,300 in the collection newly available for research. The subjects of these postcards include early drag kings and queens, scenes from plays and operas, holiday and celebratory wishes exchanged between friends and lovers, coded messages, early 20th century depictions of sapphic relationships, and many more.
Together, these records tell a story of queer existence, resistance, love, celebration, solidarity, and community. All too frequently relegated to the margins of archival materials, love between women takes centre stage in the Lesbian Collection.
The Rare Books and Special Collections Reading Room is on level 1 of the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre. For more information, please contact Rare Books and Special Collections at (604) 822-2521 or rare.books@ubc.ca.
Koerner Library will be undergoing renovations on the north side of Level 2 to prepare a dedicated space for Education Collection materials. This area of Koerner Library is expected to be closed starting on August 4, 2026, with plans to reopen in late fall.
During this time, the library will not be able to offer any access to the microforms on Level 2. Library users will not have access to the following equipment on the Level 2 during construction:
microfilms and microreaders
dual-monitor workstations
A flatbed scanner and microform machine will be available on Level 3 of Koerner Library, in the Course Reserves area, for library users during the closure.
A new home for the Education Collection at Koerner Library
In December, the library announced that a dedicated space on Level 2 of Koerner Library would serve as the new home base for the Education Collection.
The Education Collection is comprised of books, journals, and multimedia dealing with teaching strategies, curriculum evaluation, educational technology and research in education, as well as children’s and young adult books, school textbooks, and multimedia for K-12.
UBC Library and the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre (IKBLC) are excited to introduce the 2026 UBC Library Writer-in-Residence.
The UBC Library Writer-in-Residence Program promotes Canadian writing and literature to UBC’s Vancouver campus community. During the six-week, part-time, residency, which runs from September to November, the Writer will spend their time working on their own project, mentoring emerging writers through one-on-one consultation sessions and group workshops, and sharing their experience with the UBC community. This program is made possible with support from the Peña Fund.
We welcome Kevin Spenst as our Writer-in-Residence for 2026!
2026 Writer-in-Residence
Kevin Spenst (he/him)
Kevin Spenst is a poet, editor, teacher, and community arts organizer, who brings a deep commitment to poetry as a public, participatory, and place-based practice. A graduate of UBC School of Creative Writing’s MFA Program, Spenst has played an active role in Vancouver’s literary community, organizing reading series, poetry walks, outdoor book clubs, chapbook readings, and community-based literary gatherings. He is also a long-time co-organizer of the Dead Poets Reading Series and has helped create welcoming spaces for poets and readers to engage with literary lineages and local histories.
His forthcoming non-fiction collection, Stanley Park Manor: A Collective History, will be published by Anvil Press this fall. Inspired by oral history, poetic listening, and the relationship between literature and place, the collection reflects his interest in the stories that shape communities and the people who inhabit them.
As Writer-in-Residence, Spenst will bring his experience as a mentor, educator, and literary connector to UBC Library. His residency will invite students, faculty, writers, and community members to consider poetry as conversation, listening as creative practice, and the academic library as a space for literary exchange.
The Writer-in-Residence program at the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre (IKBLC) is an initiative designed to support and promote literary excellence within UBC’s academic community. Through this program, the library aims to foster a vibrant literary culture, encourage creative expression, and offer valuable insights into the writing process. The Writer-in-Residence also participates at Word Vancouver festival as a featured speaker.
While residing within the Metro Vancouver area is not required, the Writer-in-Residence position requires an occasional in-person presence on UBC Vancouver campus throughout the residency period.
The UBC Undergraduate Prize in Library Research is a way to showcase students’ effective and innovative use of library services, information experts and resources provided by the UBC Library. Applications for these prizes also provide students with an opportunity to reflect on their information-seeking experience, showcase their research beyond the classroom, and promote scholarship excellence at the undergraduate level at the University of British Columbia.
The Prize was established by UBC Library to encourage more and deeper use of its resources and collections, to advance information literacy at UBC, and to promote academic excellence at UBC.
Project title:Bugspyter
Q: Could you tell us a little bit about your project?
My project, Bugspyter, is a tool designed to detect and repair code bugs in Jupyter Notebooks using Large Language Models (LLMs). Jupyter Notebooks are widely used in data science, computer science, education, and the software industry, but users often encounter code bugs (errors that break the work or produce wrong results) related to modularized code, unexecuted cells, and outdated library versions, sometimes without even realising it. Bugspyter uses LLMs to identify those bug types and their root causes, and I also explored if enriching the model with static analysis results could improve its performance. The goal is to reduce the need for tedious manual debugging and make computational notebooks more reliable and reproducible.
Q: What does winning this prize mean to you?
Winning this prize means a great deal to me. Since getting into research, I have always loved the process of learning and discovering new things, but writing a full honours thesis was a challenge unlike anything I had faced before. Having my work recognised feels like a deeply meaningful reward. It is validation that the effort and curiosity I put into this project truly mattered. It also gives me a lot of confidence as I think about where next I want to take my research journey.
Q: What are your plans for the future?
I hope to specialise in research long-term. My immediate goal is to pursue a research-based Master’s degree in Computer Science, and eventually I would love to work as an industry researcher. Working on Bugspyter really deepened my interest in the intersection of AI and software reliability, specifically around code bugs and security vulnerabilities. This project showed me just how much potential there is in applying Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning methods to improve the way we write and maintain code, and that’s a space I’m excited to keep exploring.
Q: Do you have a favourite research spot at UBC Library?
At the UBC Okanagan Library, my favourite spot is the J. Lindsay Gordon Reading Room, specifically the seats that face outside. It has just enough space to spread out all my materials, it is wonderfully quiet, and looking out at the scenery gives me a calm, focused energy. The less busy space and quiet means I can really settle in and get into a deep work mindset, which made it the perfect place to work through a lot of my thesis.
LAW LIBRARY level 3: K5015.4 .C67 2025
K. Ambos et al, eds, Core Concepts in Criminal Law and Criminal Justice:Volume III (Cambridge University Press, 2025).
X̱wi7x̱wa Archives has added the Verna J. Kirkness Fonds to Explore Archives, UBC’s descriptive database of archival materials, making this unique collection more accessible to scholars and researchers.
Verna J. Kirkness is a member of the Fisher River Cree Nation in Manitoba, an associate professor emeritus at UBC and a renowned educator and Indigenous education advocate. She holds a Master of Education from the University of Manitoba and was awarded a Doctor of Laws, honoris causa, from UBC in 1994. She holds five honorary doctorates from other Canadian institutions, has written and edited nine books, and has received numerous awards in recognition of her work. She is a member of the Order of Canada (1998) and the Order of Manitoba (2007).
“I always wanted to be a teacher,” says Dr. Kirkness, who began her career in 1954, teaching grades one to eight at Patterson School in Reedy Creek, a Métis settlement in Manitoba.
Left: Audio cassettes of Dr. Kirkness’ recorded speeches. Right: Formal invitation and program for the Order of Canada ceremony held on April 14, 1999.
The Verna J. Kirkness Fonds chronicles Dr. Kirkness’ career from the early 1960s onwards, starting when she worked as a counsellor for the Department of Indian Affairs in Winnipeg.
Dr. Kirkness is known for her work on several milestone publications, including the education section of Wahbung: Our Tomorrows, a position paper developed by the Manitoba Indian Brotherhood (MIB), now the Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs, in collaboration with Indigenous experts in 1971.
“After that I was invited to work for the National Office in Ottawa,” says Dr. Kirkness. ”We put together all the education positions from across the country, and we made a policy paper that we called Indian Control of Indian Education, which meant no more government [control].”
“We wanted to do our own education, so that was a powerful paper,” says Dr. Kirkness.
A photograph of the policy paper, “Indian Control of Indian Education” (1972), in Xwi7xwa Archives, beside a copy of an annotated speech by Dr. Kirkness.
The materials in the fonds were donated to UBC Library by Dr. Kirkness in multiple accessions, starting in 2012. The archives include publications, written and recorded speeches, photographs, audio cassettes and VHS tapes, and other materials created by Dr. Kirkness throughout her career.
Learn more about Dr. Kirkness’ life and archives, in her own words:
After the fall of the Rafael L. Trujillo dictatorship in May 1961, the Dominican Republic entered a new era: newly acquired freedoms led to an explosion of political parties and publications. The Unión Cívica Nacional movement was the first and most powerful political organization in the fraught transition period that culminated with the first free elections held in the Dominican on December 20th, 1962. Through the publication of its newspaper, the Unión Cívica movement forcefully intervened in the country’s political debate and shaped public opinion.
The collection includes 126 issues of the Unión Cívica newspaper spanning August 1961 to November 1962. We hope this collection will allow researchers and historians to trace the transformation of Unión Cívica Nacional from a movement to a full-fledged political party that participated in a contested election, as well as to take note of the political and social climate of the Dominican Republic in the immediate aftermath of dictatorship.
Con la caída de la dictadura de Rafael L. Trujillo en mayo de 1961, la República Dominicana entró en una nueva era: las libertades recién adquiridas provocaron una explosión de partidos políticos y publicaciones. El movimiento Unión Cívica Nacional fue la primera y más poderosa organización política en el tenso periodo de transición que culminó con las primeras elecciones libres celebradas el 20 de diciembre de 1962. A través de la publicación de su periódico Unión Cívica el movimiento intervino con fuerza en el debate político en el país, moldeando así la opinión pública.
Esta colección presenta 126 números, desde agosto de 1961 hasta noviembre de 1962, lo que permitirá al público y a los investigadores rastrear la transformación de Unión Cívica Nacional de un movimiento a un partido político plenamente consolidado así como tomar nota del clima político y social de la República Dominicana en el periodo inmediato posterior a la dictadura.
See a selection of pages from the collection below:
Page 16 of the 1961 edition of Union Civica. ‘La farsa de la democratización del Trujillato. A sangre, fusta y mazmorra el trujillato conduce su mentirosa democratización.’
