A new work has been added to cIRcle: Academic Podcasting: A Handbook for Knowledge Exchange. This handbook discusses podcasts as an effective way of making academic research results sharable, digestible, and accessible. It shares tips and tricks for individuals in the scholarly community who want to create their own podcast to support knowledge exchange and mobilization for audiences beyond academia. The handbook also includes podcast creation considerations such as audience, format, branding, production, editing, and publishing.
This work is a part of The Knowledge Exchange: A Partnership in-Action Podcast, hosted by Dr. Barbara Lee and a team of UBC graduate students. This podcast includes the collaborative work between social work scholars and community partners. Each episode features their contributions to community engagement and the knowledge exchange and mobilization initiative.
cIRcle’s Support of Alternative Research Outputs
cIRcle currently holds nearly 150 podcasts, created by UBC faculty, students, and community partners. Beyond podcasts, cIRcle supports and makes available a wide range of alternative research outputs, such as audio-, visual-, and video-based outputs. You can read more about depositing and searching for alternative outputs in our blog post: Alternative Research Outputs in cIRcle.
Deposit Your Research
If you’re a UBC faculty member, researcher, student, or staff and interested in contributing your textual and non-textual work to cIRcle, please review our Submissions page for more information or Contact us.
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Content Warning: This blog post features items that may contain outdated, ableist, and derogatory language about blind, deaf and disabled people.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.
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.’
Have you recently published a paper, or are you planning to submit a manuscript for publication in a peer-reviewed journal? Many publishers allow authors to deposit a version of work into their institution’s repository. Green open access, or self-archiving in an institutional repository like cIRcle, provides authors with an avenue for sharing their work openly, without any fees.
Where do I start?
If you’ve recently published an article and want to make it freely available via cIRcle, the following resources and guides can help you get started:
UBC Library’s Author’s Guide to Self-Archiving, Publication Versions and Permissions: this two-page quick reference guide outlines key components of the publication process, from figuring out which version of your work can be shared and when, to instructions onhow to locate a publisher’s self-archiving permissions.
Copyright & Permissions for Faculty & Staff: our Faculty & Staff submissions page offers additional information, instructions, and links to resources that can help you get started with exploring options for sharing your work open access, based on where and when your work was published.
Deposit your work to cIRcle
Ready to make your publication openly accessible to all? Follow the Submission instructions that align with your current UBC affiliation. Still have questions about how Green Open Access works? Contact us!
How often do you eat rice in your meals? If you asked people from Asian cultures this question, many would likely say, “Countless times!” In East Asian and South Asian cultures, rice represents far more than a simple grain, deeply influencing people’s lives and traditions both in the past and today. This display features books […]
