Season’s greetings from UBC Library.
The year end is a wonderful time to reflect on what we’ve achieved this past year and to share our 2016 plans with our colleagues.
We started the year celebrating the Library’s 100th anniversary. From guest lectures to special events, we honored this special milestone with faculty, staff, students, and donors. We have several other events and activities scheduled to mark the closing of the centennial, including an exhibition of the Uno Langmann Family Collection of B.C. Photographs at Presentation House in the spring, the publication of a Golden Scrapbook from one of our library emeriti, and a Library time capsule curated from branch staff.
We received positive media coverage about several rare and special acquisitions in the first quarter of the year. These included our 800-year-old Papal Bull (which drew a visit from Archbishop Michael Miller from the Archdiocese of Vancouver to our campus) and two early works of Oscar Wilde (Teleny, Des Grieux).
In the fall, we launched our Open Collections portal, a new digital portal that provides researchers with a single access point to the Library’s digital collections. If you haven’t yet had a chance to explore our portal, I would encourage you to do so using this discovery tool.
In October, we officially opened the Library Preservation and Archives (Library PARC), our second on-campus storage facility. Designed to provide more than 2,200 square metres of collection storage, the facility is capable of holding about 1.6 million volumes. Library PARC also houses a campus-wide records management service, a small book cleaning station, a reading room and a staff work area.
Provincially, we funded a number of community-based programs through the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre. Twenty-four communities received funding from the British Columbia History Digitization Program, which provides matching funds to undertake digitization projects that will result in free online access to our unique provincial historical material. Three aboriginal communities received funding to preserve their oral histories through the Indigitization Program, which provides up to $10,000 in matching funds for Aboriginal organizations to conduct digitization projects.
UBC Library is also working with UC Davis, the California Digital Library, Harvard University and Ohio State on the Pay it Forward project, exploring faculty and student perspectives on open access publishing fees and financial models.
Lastly, 2015 marked the end of the Library’s five-year strategic plan. The 2010 – 2015 Plan – initiated as one of my first duties as University Librarian – generated a great deal of accomplishments and achievements, and highlights the commitment of our Library staff. This year’s Community Report gives a broad overview of what we’ve achieved in those short five years.
Looking ahead, the campus has several leadership transitions underway. To remain agile to these changes, we launched a two-year Strategic Plan last month to reflect our current priorities. We look forward to sharing our progress on these priorities in the year ahead.
Our activities, services and programs are not possible without the support of our colleagues, donors and partners. For this, I thank you and hope to see you at our events next year or to hear from you via email or by phone.
Until then, happy holidays.
Ingrid Parent
University Librarian