Ancient Egyptian scrolls, sixteenth century explorer’s maps, misty photographs of the British Columbia pioneer towns, and audio recordings of your favorite local bands—these are just some of the resources we offer digitally. Now, with a new digital portal called Open Collections, you will be able to access our materials in a whole new way.

Open Collections is designed to deliver many of our digital resources in one place. Access locally created and managed open access digital materials from the Library’s repositories: cIRcle, CONTENTdm, and AtoM.

What does this mean for your search?

Open Collections has improved searching—this means more comprehensive results in one easy click. You can take a deeper dive into content tailored to your search, content that may have been missed before the integration of these collections. Even better, it comes with a beautiful visual interface and new interactive searching.

What are the new features?

We’ve added new features to explore the collections, like the Open Collections Research API, to take your research to the next level. Our integrated cIRcle search combines research and teaching materials from UBC into your digital collections search. You can look at collections by topics like “Arts and Culture” “First Nations” and “Medicine and Public Health.”

We will explore these facets and more in further posts about our new portal.

Why should you check it out?

So much new content is available for exploration. Open Collections makes it easy to browse and learn.

Maybe you’ve already taken a peek at Open Collections, but if you haven’t –take a minute to explore the new portal now.