Join Dr. Christina Laffin, associate professor of Japanese literature, for a conversation with Kanako Nishi and book translator Allison Markin Powell to discuss what the translation of Nishi’s bestselling novel, Sakura, means in the context of the rising popularity of Japanese fiction among English readers.
Vaisakhi (or Baisakhi), typically celebrated on April 13 or 14, marks the spring harvest. It is a time for farmers to give thanks for an abundant harvest and pray for future prosperity. The festival is celebrated by the Sikh community in India and across the global Sikh diaspora. Vaisakhi also holds deep significance for Sikhs. […]
UBC Library connects learners with the tools, collections and spaces they need to explore ideas and excel academically. Join us today to support UBC Library on UBC Giving Day, April 8.
Travelling and tourism are prominent topics in the Chung Collection. The collection contains more than 10,000 archival items, including documents, photographs, books, and other artifacts. Many of these materials relate to travel through the Canadian Pacific Railway Company and offer fascinating glimpses into British Columbia’s history. They reveal traces of the province’s early commercial and industrial development, as well as stories of immigration and settlement in Canada. They also highlight the growth of leisure travel, especially the experience of exploring Canada by train or journeying across the world by cruise ship.
Browsing through these vintage pamphlets is like stepping back in time. They not only show the pricing and travel packages offered during that period, but also capture the excitement and romance of crossing a continent by rail or sailing to distant destinations. At the same time, the imagery and descriptions in these pamphlets reveal how people once imagined and represented different parts of the world, offering insight into the historical perspectives and cultural biases of the time.
This blog post highlights a selection of international travel promotional materials from the Chung Collection. Enjoy!
Please note that the Chung Collection may contain outdated or harmful language, stereotypes, descriptions, or imagery that reflect the perspectives of their time. Please read with historical awareness.
A Peiping sojourn
This promotional pamphlet from around the 1920s introduces Peiping, a former romanized name for Beijing, China. Its pages bring the city to life with descriptions of everyday street scenes and local traditions, from weddings and funerals to lively festivals, fairs, and markets. The pamphlet also highlights theatre performances, food, and a variety of places that visitors might explore. Together, this pamphlet offer a fascinating glimpse of how the city was presented to travelers nearly a century ago.
Here’s how it describes Peiping as a destination full of remarkable places to visit:
“If one stays in Japan, each city has its charm, its own special object of interest, but to really see Japan means traveling from one end of the island to the other, to the north – and then there is still the return. In Peiping and near Peiping are situated all the places of interest – the Great Wall, the Ming Tombs – so many intriguing spots that all description are dull as compared with the actuality.”
S/S Empress of France Mediterranean cruise de luxe : Istanbul March 1931, few notes on points visited during the excursion
This 1931 pamphlet describes a shore excursion to Istanbul during a Mediterranean cruise on the Empress of France. It offers a brief introduction to the city’s history and highlights several remarkable sites that tourists could visit while in Istanbul. You might even find inspiration for your next cultural trip to explore the prehistorical marvels of the cradle of human civilisation!
This 1964 pamphlet advertises Canadian Pacific Airlines tours in Italy. It includes detailed information on the daily schedule and tour costs. At the time, a 15-day tour of Italy from Rome to Sicily cost about 400 Canadian dollars for a single room, with hotels and meals included.
This 1930 pamphlet advertises 48 attractive escorted tours to Europe and back. It features a variety of itineraries to Hungary, with routes passing through many European countries. Every detail of these excursions was planned, from transportation to sightseeing. Take a look through the pamphlet and explore what these tour packages had to offer. Browse the price lists, discover the destinations, and imagine the experience of traveling across Europe almost a century ago!
To Australia and New Zealand by the Canadian Pacific route
This 1932 booklet advertises travel to Australia and New Zealand, and train and ship travel with the Canadian Pacific. Take a look through its pages and imagine embarking on a vintage journey across the Pacific. Travelers could board the quadruple-screw motor-ship “Aorangi” or the triple-screw steamship “Niagara” in Vancouver or Victoria and set sail toward the South Pacific. Along the way, the voyage included stops in the tropical destinations of Honolulu and the Fiji Islands. From there, passengers could continue on to New Zealand or Australia to explore beautiful cities and dramatic natural landscapes.
Explore the Chung Collection, one of the largest research collections on the Canadian Pacific Railway Company, featuring documents, maps, publications, photographs, and artifacts that illustrate CPR’s construction, steamship services, travel, and more.
Read more blog posts about Canadian Pacific Railway travel:
Applications are now open to join the 2026 UBC Library Writer-in-Residence program. This program provides a unique opportunity for a distinguished writer to engage with UBC students, faculty and community through enriching activities and events.
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.
The successful applicant will be an established author who has demonstrated a sustained record of excellence through publication with a recognized and reputable publishing house. While there are no restrictions regarding literary genre or form, applicants must possess a distinguished literary reputation, evidenced by critical recognition, awards, or other notable achievements within the literary community.
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, which runs from September 19, 2026, to October 30, 2026.
Apply online by May 30, 2026. For more information on program eligibility and benefits, please visit the program website.
We have lost access to Cambridge University Press. Users will see a ‘503 Service Temporarily Unavailable’ error.
Users will see a red box pop-up saying ‘The organization you have selected has not submitted information to Cambridge University Press for their Shibboleth/Athens account. Therefore you cannot access Cambridge Core with this login.’
March 20th was Nowruz, which marks the Persian New Year and the arrival of spring in the Northern hemisphere. Nowruz, meaning “new day” in Persian, has been celebrated for over 3,000 years across regions influenced by Persian culture. The Haft-Seen table is adorned with seven symbolic items, each beginning with the letter ‘S’ in Persian: […]
To support cIRcle’s mission of open access and long-term preservation, cIRcle’s File Format Guidelines offer recommendations and suggestions on how to create accessible, stable, and usable digital files. Through this resource, we aim to help UBC community members who wish to deposit their works to cIRcle create a strong version of their materials, for use by a wide audience. Digital files created with accessibility and long-term preservation in mind contributes to increasing digital accessibility more broadly, in addition to increasing the availability and use of materials at UBC.
The creation and maintenance of accessible digital resources is a vital part of the transition to a more broadly accessible society, and it’s important to ensure that the digital resources we create are available to all users—and that said resources remain that way over the long-term.
There are important, concrete steps that can be taken to make content both more accessible and more stable into the future. While there is no universal format that can be accessible to all, there are numerous worthwhile steps that can be taken to increase the accessibility of digital materials. Read on to find out more about file formats, why they are important for cIRcle, and how you might strengthen your digital outputs.
What are File Formats, and How Do They Affect Usability?
Essentially, file formats are containers for digital content. Using a container that fails to provide equitable access, or that isn’t well suited to preservation, puts that content behind a barrier and threatens the ability to use that content in the future. Attributes that might not seem like issues at first glance can have significant downstream effects—meaning that it’s incredibly important to pay attention to file format choices.
For example, putting content in a recognized-text PDF file means that most screen readers can read it, unlike PDFs that are image-only (i.e. a PDF that has no searchable or selectable text). These types of limitations can create significant barriers for persons who are blind or visually impaired, persons who have learning disabilities, or persons with physical disabilities. Similarly, a lack of transcript for video or audio files can create barriers to access for persons who have difficulty hearing, seeing, or understanding the media contained within.
File formats can also have a significant impact on digital preservation efforts, with certain formats being less stable than others. To support our digital preservation activities, cIRcle may change the file format of submitted material during the deposit process (for example, a DOCX file may be converted to a PDF) to ensure the materials remain useable into the future. Additionally, cIRcle recommends against using proprietary file formats wherever possible, as they can pose additional challenges for long term preservation and general access by users.
Content Preparation
Small changes can make a large difference in the accessibility of materials. The cIRcle File Format Guidelines provide users with some concrete and practical steps to help them understand how to prepare their files for submission. The following examples highlight some thoughtfully created materials in cIRcle that act to make open access content more accessible to all:
When creating Academic Choices and Existential Perils : a tabletop role-playing game, the creators made sure that the PDFs had recognizable text and were in a screen readable fonts, tagged for assistive software and hardware, and had alt-text for the images within. A plain-text version in DOCX format was also provided as an additional access option for users of screen readers, or for anyone who would benefit from having a copy without the visual elements.
Additionally, the creators of the Thinking Climate Change podcast added an individual transcript for each podcast episode in a screen-readable font, with the transcript for each episode clearly noting the speaker’s name each time the speaker changes.
Accessible video deposits can include a number of elements, and the Using cIRcle to Share Community Engaged Research is one example. The creators provided a captioned MP4 file for the video itself; a tagged, readable PDF of the slides used; a copy of said slides in PPT format; and a tagged, readable PDF transcript that clearly notes the speaker’s name each time the speaker changes. The creators also ensured that all materials used a screen readable font.
Deposit Your Research
Have you reviewed our File Format Guidelines and want to submit your materials to cIRcle, or do you have further questions about how to prepare your files for cIRcle? If so, please consult our Submissions page for more information!
