Library news

Professor Sowmya Somanath, of UVic’s Computer Science Department, focuses her research on studying, designing, and evaluating computational systems that help people create digital and physical artifacts using electronics, fabrication devices, and virtual reality platforms.

Through the generosity of Dr. David Bond, UVic Libraries’ Special Collections is enhancing its collection of wood engravings. This unique printmaking technique uses relief printing and involves an artist carving an image or text into the end of a block of wood, referred to as the end grain. UVic Libraries anticipates this collection will benefit students, faculty, and community members with an interest in incorporating this technique into their artistic practice, and studying the relationship between illustrations and the written word, among other topics.

Professor Angie Chau engages students in creative class assignments that allow them to apply their knowledge in artistic ways, while also acquiring practical technical skills.

Professor Carey Newman, Impact Chair in Indigenous Art Practices, recently co-edited a Special Issue of KULA: Knowledge Creation, Dissemination, and Preservation Studies, a peer-reviewed, open access journal. The Special Issue on Indigenous Knowledges features contributions in diverse formats that reflect the plurality of Indigenous Knowledges and ways of knowing.

The Theatre Energy archives joins a number of fonds and collections of individual artists and companies from the history of BC theatre, including Hoffman’s own fonds of BC theatre research materials. Many thanks to our donors, and to colleagues past and present, for their work to preserve these rich cultural materials. These records are available for teaching, research and community access in Special Collections & University Archives.

In 1971, the Province of British Columbia developed a purpose-built computer data storage and retrieval system, known as EQUIS (Environmental Quality Information System), to manage information related to their permitting system regulating discharges of pollutants to land, air, and water, under the B.C. Pollution Control Act, 1967. Special Collections and University Archives is pleased to advise faculty of the availability of British Columbia historical water quality information through the Dataverse.

Read about a day in the life of Digital Scholarship Commons Manager Rich McCue: ”The best part of teaching in the Digital Scholarship Commons is watching people develop the skills that they either need to help them further a research project or pursue a passion project."

Professor Tom Gleeson of UVic Engineering is a global expert on hydrology and groundwater sustainability. He has worked with UVic librarians to create data management plans to ensure that data sets produced by his research projects are open, accessible, and reusable by other researchers, now and in the future.

Professors Lisa Surridge and Mary Elizabeth Leighton from UVic’s English Department have recently published a new book, titled The Plot Thickens: Illustrated Victorian Serial Fiction from Dickens to Du Maurier based in part on material from UVic Libraries’ Special Collections & University Archives.

Nathan Lachowsky and his community-based research team has worked with the library to create an open access collection of oral histories containing the personal stories of long-term HIV survivors and caregivers in British Columbia.

Professor John Lutz, of UVic’s History Department, has worked with UVic Libraries to create a number of valuable, free digital collections related to the history and politics of British Columbia.

Professors Erin E. Kelly and Sara Humphreys of UVic’s Academic and Technical Writing Program in the Faculty of Humanities recently published an open access writing guide titled Why Write? to help students in Canada to become more effective and confident academic writers.

Under the guidance of law professors Deborah Curran and Calvin Sandborn, and with the assistance of ELC staff, students in UVic’s Environmental Law Centre (ELC) Club conduct an annual research-a-thon related to a pressing environmental issue.

Germanic Studies professor Charlotte Schallié’s research project, Narrative Art and Visual Storytelling in Holocaust and Human Rights Education, brings Holocaust survivors and artists together to create open educational resources for students.

Internationally renowned UVic archaeologist, Ann Stahl, is working with UVic Libraries to preserve and make available her vast and irreplaceable collection of research material from the Banda region in Ghana.

UVic Anthropologist Andrea Walsh is working with UVic Libraries to openly publish two graphic novels that will be collaboratively produced with survivors of the residential school system and their families.

UVic Libraries are proud to have partnered with the Endings Project to archive the Robert Graves Diary. This looks like a normal website, but it is able to provide full browse and search functionality without the use of any complex server-side software. We “staticized” the site so that, like a book on shelf, it can be picked up in the future and read in any browser. This Endings-compliant website offers a first-in-Canada prototype for scalable, sustainable archiving of digital research projects.

For more than a decade, UVic has played a leading role in Holocaust studies. Home to the I-witness Holocaust Field School (the first of its kind for undergraduate students at a Canadian university when it launched in 2010), the Faculty of Humanities also offers a master’s stream in Holocaust studies (the only one of its kind in Canada).

All of us at UVic Libraries have worked hard to support our students and many stakeholders through the various phases of the pandemic. We wish you well for the holidays and new year.

Totalling over 200 items, the Karl Spreitz Collection consists of documentary films, film-outs, and commercial footage, sampling Spreitz’ long career. Additionally, photographs, art works, textual records and objects from his archival fonds have been selectively digitized to provide additional context to Spreitz’ life and works. The Libraries’ digital collection compliments an earlier digital exhibit created by UVic’s Legacy Galleries, entitled Karl Spreitz: Self-Propelled.