A UBC Library partnership project was named the winner of the Special Libraries Association (SLA) annual Physics-Astronomy-Mathematics Division award.
The Library, in partnership with the renowned Banff International Research Station for Mathematical Innovation and Discovery (BIRS), made more than 2,000 video lectures from the BIRS lecture series freely available online – in UBC’s digital repository, cIRcle.
The collaboration is a large-scale project to digitally preserve and disseminate extensive video content from the world’s best mathematicians. The BIRS videos launched in cIRcle last fall and have already been heavily used, with more than 18,000 downloads and 40,000 views.
The Library-BIRS project received the SLA award for significant contribution to the exchange of information in mathematics. “This is a truly collaborative effort and involves three nations that BIRS serves,” says Eugene Barsky, Research Data Librarian at UBC.
“We are proud of BIRS’ effort in recording, archiving, preserving, and disseminating its on-site scholarly proceedings to researchers worldwide through UBC’s online library service.” said Dr. Nassif Ghoussoub, the Director of BIRS and a UBC Professor.
The award was presented today at the annual SLA conference in Boston.
To view the current inventory of BIRS videos in cIRcle, visit the BIRS community page.
About cIRcle
cIRcle is UBC’s digital repository for research and teaching materials created by the University community and its partners. Materials in cIRcle are openly accessible to anyone on the web and are preserved for future generations.
About Banff International Research Station for Mathematical Innovation and Discovery (BIRS)
BIRS is one of the most prominent mathematical research institutions in the world with strong associations to notable UBC mathematicians and its Board includes UBC President Arvind Gupta. Members of BIRS represent 400 institutions from more than 60 countries, creating a content-rich network for sharing research, knowledge and information.