Utagaruta: a poetry game
Our One Hundred Poets Collection contains 20 different card sets of the utagaruta (uta = poem; karuta = card), a variation of the Japanese game called “Karuta” (which originated from “Carta,” the Portuguese name for “Card”). The Utagaruta is a poetry game, that exercises your reflexes and memory. The karuta is a combination of two […]
Chung Collection Menus: A Flavour Throwback
Restaurant and hotel menus are windows to the past. When looking at old menus, you can learn about what kinds of foods people used to prefer, what kinds of produce was available, what was considered to be an elaborate dish, and how much people used to pay for food. The Chung Collection contains hundreds of […]
Pixelating
Pixelating: A Digital Humanities Mixer is a program facilitated by Susan Atkey, Larissa Ringham and Allan Cho, at the University of British Columbia (UBC). The program is a forum for discussion to develop UBC Library-based digital humanities projects. Digital humanities is an emerging area, which combines technologies and digital tools with the objects and methods […]
Surgery in 16th century
Jherome of Bruyinswike (also known as Jerome of Brunswick or Hieronymus Bruncschwig or Jerome von Braunschweig), was born around 1450 in Strasburg, Germany. He was a surgeon, alchemist, and botanist, responsible for the publication of the first illustrated book on surgery in English. Brunswick was an apprentice to a master surgeon and had success in […]
Infant Feeding Devices in the History of Nursing in Pacific Canada Collection
Collections stand out for different reasons. The History of Nursing in Pacific Canada Collection contains many unique items, including materials from the Ethel Johns Fonds and local material (BC and Yukon) held at UBC Library. It further contains what is known as the Infant Feeders Collection, held in the Memorial Room of the Woodward Biomedical […]
Graphic art in the Chung Collection
If you take a look at the Canadian Pacific Railway Company posters in our Chung Collection, you’ll be amazed by all of the wonderful paintings depicting early and mid 20th-century travel in Canada. These promotional posters were created to attract tourists to the many trains, hotels, world cruises, Canadian tours, and airplanes owned by Canadian […]
Looking back on seven years at the UBC Digitization Centre
The UBC Library Digitization Centre is celebrating another birthday: seven years! In many cultures and religions, seven is a special—and sometimes lucky—number. There are seven continents, seven seas, seven classic world wonders, and seven colors in the rainbow. For everyone at the Digitization Centre, seven years also marks many proud milestones. Over 50 collections Over […]
Explore Open Collections: German Consulate Fonds
The German Consulate Fonds is a digital collection that was created in partnership with UBC Library Rare Books and Special Collections (RBSC). It contains documents from various German Consulates in Canada, dating from 1909 to 1939. The collection contains documents, reports, memoranda, and correspondences from German Consulates in Ottawa, St. John’s, Newfoundland, Toronto, Winnipeg and […]
Explore Open Collections: Yip Sang Collection
Yip Sang was known as the “unofficial mayor” of Chinatown. He was a businessman, political activist and social reformer. Yip Sang, also known as Yip Chun Tien, was born in 1845 in China. In 1864, he left his home village Shengtang, in Guangdong province, to move to San Francisco for work as a dishwasher, cook, […]
Family Day
February 12 is Family Day in British Columbia. While this statutory holiday was created in BC in 2013, falling on the second Monday every February, it has existed in other parts of Canada for even longer. The very first province to observe Family Day as a statutory holiday was Alberta in 1990, when Family Day […]