New Books at Education Library: August 2023

PZ7.G77224 Tw 2022 Two degrees / Alan Gratz.

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The SUB & the Nest: The visual history of the UBC Student spaces.

The Student Union Building (SUB), now called the UBC Life Building, and the Nest are the student community cornerstone of the UBC campus. The AMS Image Collection has many photographs of both buildings that have served to document the day to day activities of student life in and around the buildings. For this weeks blogpost I have browsed through the photos and have curated short visual history of both of the student buildings. The old SUB had a lot character to it which really shines in some of these older photographs. Comparatively the new sleek design of the Nest and the amount of effort that went into its construction is very apparent when viewing the construction photographs compared to the finished building. To learn more about this history of the UBC student spaces, please visit the UBC wiki here: https://wiki.ubc.ca/Student_Union_Building.

 

The SUB

SUB Construction

Ballroom dancing

SUB Lower Level South Side Extension Construction

SUB Lower Level South Side Extension Ribbon Cutting Ceremony (Chestnutt, Glenna; Frank, Dave; Busza, Eva; Mercer, Jonathan)

SUB South Side Expansion Opening Day

Staff at the SUB Business Office

SUB Knoll

SUB Council Chambers (Room 206)

SUB Courtyard

AMS Information and Confectionery, and AMS Box Office

Lickety Split (McMillan, Sue)

The Moon in the SUB

the SUB Delly (McMillan, Sue)

SUB Thunderbird Shop

SUB Partyroom

SUB Concourse looking South

CITR radio

SUB Listening Lounge

SUB Second Floor South foyer

SUB Bowling Alley

SUB Arcade

SUB Lower Level looking East

The Outpost in the SUB

SUB post office and staff (Leo, Vicki)

Amnesty International Display in the SUB

Hallway outside Services

SUB Courtyard during Clubs Days

 

The Nest

Signing of New SUB (Nest) Agreement (DeWolfe, Anne; Lai, Hubert; Ouillet, Pierre; Ahmadian, Bijan; Dovjenko, Ekaterina; Horton, Ross)

Nest Architect Welcome Event

Nest Construction

Nest Construction

Nest Construction

Nest Construction

Nest Construction

Nest Construction

Nest Construction

AMS Student NEST

Thank you for reading!

Classified ads of the bygone days in the Aldergrove star

For this weeks blogpost I decided to return to the BC Historic Newspapers collection in order to find something from the past to write on. In my opinion, the most interesting part of the newspaper is Classified ads where people place advertisements for all the goods and services they are looking to buy, sell, and trade. I selected the Aldergrove Star newspaper to look through for this post because it had a classifieds section in every newspaper, and several decades of printings during late 20th century are available on Open Collections. Found below are some of the most intriguing ads that I’ve found. As always, there is a bit of additional commentary with each advertisement.

There were a lot of missing animals in the lost and found section, but the strangest of them was a whole entire heifer. She should have been easy to find as cattle aren’t particularly good at hiding.

At some point, someone decided to take upon themselves the title “The MANURE KING.” That was a very bold choice for them to make.

Are these party supplies for birthdays? Weddings? Retirements? Who had spare party supplies and supposed that someone else would like to pay to use them?

The Arena vote must have been very divisive if it was tearing relationships apart.

Free dog with purchase of go-cart. Don’t mind the typo.

PLUMBING? PLUMBING!

Are three Chinchillas an ideal Christmas gift? They also come with their own home at no additional cost.

There isn’t anything particularly strange or humorous about this classified ad, but I am surprised that changing your name resulted in a public notice in a newspaper. I hope Annie enjoyed the new name!

These people were truly ahead of their time. While many people today shop through websites or apps like Amazon and Doordash, it is considered a modern luxury. But shopping delivery services were also available through the classifieds in ’79!

This was one of the most peculiar of job advertisements. How many people have the skills to both lighthouse keep and baby sit?

Why did someone need a watchman for only three nights? What could they have been doing? This reads like the introduction to a mystery novel.

The advertiser should have made this open to women too. But you really don’t see opportunities like this anymore.

There were a lot of personal ads that were essentially Ye Olde Tinder profiles, and this one was the most quintessential among them.

This advertisement made me realize how much I take modern free document creation software for granted.

The Langley Senior Ukulele Ensemble lacked funding and they decided to address it with a Giant Garage sale.

Thank you for reading!

Interesting By-laws of Victoria in 1877

Our BC Historical books collection contains a copy of the City of Victoria By-laws from 1877. Some of these laws are very interesting and not pieces of legislation you would expect in todays world, such as a municipality regulating the sale and distribution of poisons. Below are some of the notable laws on the books at the time.

In 1877 seven miles per hours down the street was considered “furious” riding/driving.

Oddly firework use and firearm carrying were regulated under the same by-law.

 This By-law makes me wonder if the local apothecary was selling strange elixirs to people of ill repute.

Pool tables were taxed at $10 a year!

Victoria also decided to tax mans best friend for $2.

Thistles must have been a true menace if they had their own entire by-law dedicated to them.

The city also wrote a law to assist paupers in 1884.

Thank you for reading!

1993 U.S.-Russian Presidential Summit at UBC

After the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the Russian Federation and United States made an effort to attempt to establish better diplomacy as to step away from the tension of the Cold war to try and build a new era of cooperation. Part of this process was to establish a meeting between newly elected Presidents of both Russia and the United States. So on April 3rd and 4th 1993, Vancouver and UBC hosted then Russian Federation President Boris Yeltsin and United States President Bill Clinton. The event drew much local fanfare, and both Presidents had very important agendas to address both foreign and domestic policy issues as they set the stage for a new era of global politics.

The Presidents were both gifted UBC apparel; Clinton as shown above was given a UBC sweatshirt which he was seen in during a routine jog. Yeltsin, as pictured below, was gifted a UBC Engineers jacket, which he posed for photos wearing, although it was reported that he did not keep the jacket.

Interestingly, both Presidents made a stop by the Museum of Anthropology, which was nice and tidy due to the location being prepared to be in the film “Intersection.”

 

If you would like to watch the Clinton-Yeltsin Vancouver Summit press conference, it has been made publicly available by the Clinton Presidential Library:

The United States National Security Archives at George Washington University has made available the memos of President Clinton’s National Security Advisor Anthony Lake to Clinton after they were declassified. This seven page document details what the Presidents likely discussed during the Vancouver summit. It is available for reading here.

The next year, the Homecoming committee hoped that the Presidents liked the campus enough to want to return for Homecoming and sent a formal invitation to the White House and Kremlin.

The short version of the 1993 Vancouver Presidential summit, as written by the Ubyssey:

Thank you for reading!

UBC Library Open Education Impact & Activity Report – 2022/2023

The Scholarly Communications and Copyright Office released this year’s Open Education Impact & Activity Report, highlighting UBC Library’s combined impact on open educational practices at UBC for 2022/2023. For more information, or to share feedback please contact open.ubc@ubc.ca.

Interesting By-laws of Vancouver in 1898.

Our BC Historical books collection contains a copy of the City of Vancouver By-Laws from 1898. Reading from them almost one hundred and twenty-five years later, there are some odd legislative topics that pop-out from the more mundane issues such as building codes and health inspection. Below are some of the notable laws on the books at the time.

Pool halls and clairvoyants both required operating licenses to be legally allowed to do business in Vancouver.

A loaf of bread was described as weighing 1.5 pounds as defined by the Bread-law. Biscuits, buns, rolls, crackers, and muffins were not regulated.
Stores were legally obligated to close on Sundays. This must of made weekly planning for groceries and errands much more difficult.

Minors could purchase and drink alcohol with parent permission. Speech was limited under a morality law. Prostitution, public intoxication, and indecent exposure are all illegal. By-law 7 seems to allow for swimming without a bathing suit after 8pm.

No alcohol on Sunday either. Drinks had to stop being served at 11pm Saturday.

Bicycles also have laws. How was the speed of a cyclist determined before the speedometer was invented?

Tires and wheels were entirely separately regulated from vehicles. And the city had official “Street Inspectors.”

Lawn care is regulated and weeds are deemed illegal. If you did not destroy the weeds, someone else would and you would be charged for it.

Women were not allowed at music halls unless they were performing, and then they had to be on stage. And the hall had to be closed by 11:30pm.

Thank you for reading!

Collection Spotlight: New French Picture Books

Our new Collection Spotlight is up.  “French Picture Books” is a gathering of current French titles in the Children’s Literature genre.

New Books at Education Library: July 2023

PZ7.S47957 Iam 2022 I must betray you / Ruta Sepetys.

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PZ7.1.A526 Sc 2022 Scout’s honor / Lily Anderson.

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PZ7.1.C594725 Mar 2022 The Marvellers / Dhonielle Clayton.

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During Pride, reflecting on ASK

Content warning: The following blog post includes mention of suicide and refers to homophobic and transphobic policies and laws in a historical context.

Many thanks to guest blogger Atreya Madrone for contributing the below post! Atreya is a graduate student at the UBC School of Information and is completing a professional experience with RBSC this summer working with vertical files, which are individual or small groups of archival materials.

This is part of an ongoing series of blog posts that gives students and RBSC team members a chance to show off some of the intriguing materials they encounter serendipitously through their work at RBSC.


This summer at RBSC I am working with the vertical files for a professional experience project and I have found some extremely interesting materials. At the end of Pride month, I came across a submission to the Canadian Royal Commission on Security from the Association of Social Knowledge (ASK), the first gay rights group in Canada.

Within the file is a study conducted by the group where they sent out letters to government organizations with a brief questionnaire regarding the hiring of queer employees and the responses received from all across the country. Also included in the file is a detailed list of court cases against queer and trans people in Canada. One such court case occurred in Vancouver where police trapped 5 people in a bathroom in Stanley Park and ASK states that “there were suicides as a result of this police surveillance.” These court cases occurred in July 1963, 60 years ago almost exactly. The materials in this vertical file gives us primary source material on anti-queer and trans sentiments within Canada and reminds us that Pride is about protecting queer and trans people and fighting systemic queer and transphobia.