Starting Tuesday April 7th, we are having a “spring cleaning” book sale located on the Main Floor in SE-14. $1.00 per book or bring your own bag to fill for $5.00.
Popular Reading Collection Launched
Need a break? Try a book from our new popular reading collection. These books will go out for two weeks with no reserves and no renewals. The collection includes:
- new fiction
- graphic novels
- memoirs and
- non-fiction.
You’ll find it on the main floor, just inside the glass doors.
Peer tutor recruitment is underway
Content, study skills, and writing peer tutors in the Learning Commons are having their best year ever with almost 2800 visits as of spring break – an 8% increase over last year. What are tutees learning? They tell us of the knowledge, skills, and attitudes they developed while working with peer tutors:
- Organization skills – better thought process – more confidence when going into exams
- Good methods on how to balance all my studies
- Became more focused on my work
- Got better and faster at math
- Improved my grades and my work ethic
We are now recruiting for tutors for September 2015. We want to develop just as strong a team of peer tutors next year. Job posting and hiring details are available at bcit.ca/learningcommons.
Colour Your Campus Winners
The winners have been announced and we’re already preparing for our award winning wall!
photo by Cathy Hyska
photo by Cathy Hyska
Congratulations to Herman Ho Man Ho for his winning entry!
See all the winning entries here: https://commons.bcit.ca/50/projects/colour-your-campus/
Colour Your Campus
It’s the most wonderful time of the year…Best Reads 2014
We’ve made our list and we’ve checked it twice…and now we’d like you to check it too…
Have a look at our list and then check out some titles to peruse over the holidays, because when you need a break from the hustle and bustle, it’s always nice to settle down with a good book.
20th anniversary Time Capsule – a glimpse of BCIT in 1984!
In 1984, during BCIT’s 20th Anniversary year, a concrete cairn was created in Campus Square to hold a Plexiglas box made by the 2nd year Civil & Structural students and their instructions. And in this box BCIT students and staff placed items that they felt represented BCIT in 1984.
The plaque being removed to reveal the cavity beneath. The plaque reads: 1964-1984-2014 This capsule was placed here on the first day of March nineteen hundred and eighty five to commemorate the twentieth anniversary year of the British Columbia Institute of Technology by the Honorable Robert G. Rogers Lieutenant Governor of British Columbia. To be opened on BCIT’s fiftieth anniversary in the year two thousand and fourteen. Quisque Dominus Summi. Photographer, Scott McAlpine.
The Plexiglas time capsule container being removed from its’ resting place. Photographer, Scott McAlpine.
Transcribed from the plaque: The 20th Anniversary Time Capsule was designed and constructed by 1985 2nd year Civil & Structural students: Bernie Serne, Greg Pierzchalski, Louis Nasr, Gary Neilson, Keith Pribyl, Ken Thompson, Loris Tommasel, Bruce Cranna. Supervising instructors: Marsh Heinekey Cet., Tom Abbuhl Cet., Jim McLean Cet., and Bob Butler P.Eng. Landscaping by the 1985 Horticulture students. BCIT Archives item number: F1-S2-SS25-2014-12.001.
On October 5, 2014 BCIT turned 50 years old. There are many ways that BCIT’s anniversary is being celebrated this semester and the next. Check out the BCIT 50 website for all of the fun events! Following the intentions of the creators the time capsule was opened as part of BCIT’s 50th Anniversary Celebrations.
Kathy Kinloch and special guests unveil contents of time capsule at the Fab50 Event, October 4, 2014.
The contents of the box have been passed to the custody of the BCIT Archives where they will be preserved and made available for future generations. The Archivist would like to share a few of her favourite items with you.
This brochure shows off some fabulous 1980s fashion. On the back is listed the specialties of graduates from BCIT’s Engineering Technology, Health Sciences and Management degrees. BCIT Archives item number: F1-S2-SS25-2014-12.016.
Here is an aerial view of the BCIT Burnaby campus in 1984. Can you find where in this photograph you spend the most time on campus now? BCIT Archives item number: F1-S2-SS25-2014-12.011.
This is the front of the invitation to the rededication of BCIT held Friday September 14, 1984. This is a good example of the logo used in 1984 to promote the 20th Anniversary. BCIT Archives item number: F1-S2-SS25-2014-12.018.
Examples of merchandise available in 1984 to celebrate BCIT’s 20th anniversary! Photographer, Scott McAlpine.
BCIT Archives item numbers: BCIT 20 1964-1984, pen F1-S2-SS25-2014-12.028, BCIT 20 ’64-’84 men’s tie F1-S2-SS25-2014-12-.030, BCIT leather coasters F1-S2-SS25-2014-12-.029, BCIT pin F1-S2-SS25-2014-12.032, and BCIT 20 keychain F1-S2-SS25-2014-12.033.
This is the map included with the invitation to the rededication of BCIT in 1984. This map would be of little use for getting around campus today! BCIT Archives item number: F1-S2-SS25-2014-12.019.
Over the thirty years that the items were outside on campus in their specially designed box they suffered very little considering the changes in temperature they experienced and the unavoidable moisture courtesy of the west coast rain. Paper items showed some warping and all metal items removed from the time capsule were damaged by rust. The one item that was placed in the concrete cairn beside the Plexiglas box, rather than in it, was quite badly damaged by mould. Once I have cleaned it stay tuned for a conservation blog post and the big reveal of this unofficial addition to the time capsule.
Photo of typical rust damage found on all time capsule items with staples or paperclips. This is the cover of the collective agreement between BCIT and the BCIT Staff Society from 1983. Photographer, Cindy McLellan.
A classic time capsule item is a local newspaper. The creators of the 1984 time capsule included the Year in Review Section of the Vancouver Sun from December 31st 1984. Some quick facts from that section:
- In 1984 Canada had three Prime Ministers – Trudeau, Turner and Mulroney
- Michael Jackson released Thriller and came to Vancouver as part of his Victory Tour. Three sold out nights at BC Place Stadium
- Prince Harry was born
- Canada’s first test tube twins were born in Toronto
- Marc Garneau became the first Canadian in space
- There is severe famine Ethiopia
- Pope John Paul visited Canada
Anniversaries are a time to look back as well as into the future. BCIT is planning to bury a time capsule in the spring of 2015 as part of the 50th Anniversary celebrations. What sort of content or specific items would you like to see included? It is the items with a personal touch that I enjoy in a time capsule. The personal touch that stuck out for me among the contents of the capsule was a quick handwritten note from a BCIT staff member.
Greetings back to you Susan Walters! I hear you retired recently. Congratulations! BCIT Archives item number: F1-S2-SS25-2014-12.024.
Being as how I am also a Librarian I could not resist highlighting one final item. Looking through the publications in the time capsule I found this little gem! In 1984 BCIT was ahead of other academic institutions, a quote from the below article: “BCIT will be the first library in British Columbia, if not Canada, to have an entire catalogue on-line available to students and faculty.”
Short article, ‘New database system adopted by Library,’ from BCIT Messenger: Special ‘BCIT Week’ edition Vol. 14, No. 1, September 6, 1984. p.7 & 8.
This system was very advanced for 1984 and granted students and faculty freedom from the microfiche catalogue! Do you know how to use a microfiche reader? The Archivist wants to know!
Milestone reached!
For the first time ever BCIT’s Burnaby Campus Library has surpassed the 100,000 milestone for number of visits to the Library in a single month!
During October 2014 we had a combined gate count 104,588 for the Library and ehPod! That an average of 3,400 visits per day.
This breaks the previous monthly record of 95,411 set in October 2012
The top ten things we learned during Open Access Week
From October 22nd – 29th a number of free sessions were provided by SFU, UBC and Douglas College libraries to provide information on projects and resources involving Open Access. A number of us from the library attended different sessions and we’ve put together this list to share what we found out.
- There is a lot of data to support open textbooks – here are statistics in favour of Open Textbooks shared by Rajiv Jhangiani:
a. Since the 1970s the cost of textbooks has increased by an astounding 812%
b. There is a direct relationship between textbook cost and students success (eg. 35% choose not to register for a course due to textbook cost and 23% regularly go without textbooks due to cost) - The BC Campus Open Textbook project’s free high quality textbooks are just a start. Other, more interactive, Open Online Resources are the future.
- Phylo the trading card game is an open source and open access project that started at UBC because some scientists discovered that “Kids know more about Pokemon creatures than they do about real creatures*” and they wanted to do something about it.
- In order to flip the classroom, UBC Anatomy has produced videos and other learning objects which are freely available on the web with Creative Commons licensing: http://www.neuroanatomy.ca/
- What a Book Sprint is – a group of people getting together to create and publish a book within 3-5 days: BCCampus hosted one and created this book: British Columbia in a Global Context
- In order to address quality concerns, many open textbooks, including some at BC Campus are accompanied by faculty reviews.
- The Open Access Button site – provides a button that can be added to your favourites bar that allows you to search for a free version of an article when you encounter a paywall
- Student peer reviewed journals are being published at SFU and UBC with Open Journal Systems, and the articles are indexed in Google Scholar
- The Public Knowledge Project School at SFU offers free, online courses in Open Journal Systems for journal managers, editors and reviewers
- Instructors are engaging their students as producers of content in all kinds of ways and, for the most part, students are posting their work on open access sites with Creative Commons licensing. Students are enthused about working on assignments that have value and are shared with an audience of more than one or two people.
Open Access Week is here!
Open Access literature is digital, online, free of charge and free from most copyright and 
licensing restrictions. (Suber, P. (2012). Open Access Overview. Retrieved from http://legacy.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/overview.htm). This is something to celebrate!
UBC is offering free sessions on open access publishing and open education and SFU is offering free sessions on student publishing and open textbooks
If you want to know more about Open Access (OA) and what is available, check out BCIT’s Open Access Research Guide. It has links to sources of OA ebooks, OA data and OA ejournals, as well as links to OA research and OA publishing information.
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