Dr. Barber was a visionary thinker with a strong commitment to strengthening BC, improving the quality of life for its residents, and providing an enriched university experience for students. His gift of $20 million was largely responsible for the development and construction of the Learning Centre and the realization of its mission: a facility dedicated to the intellectual, social, cultural and economic development of the people of British Columbia and beyond.

Ike and Jean Barber with students. Photo: Martin Dee

Dr. Barber’s generosity has been instrumental in establishing programs to promote research, including the creation of the I.K. Barber Enhanced Forestry Laboratory at the University of Northern British Columbia, the Irving K. Barber Diabetes Research Endowment Fund at UBC and the Ike Barber Human Islet Transplant Laboratory at Vancouver Hospital in partnership with UBC.

“We are ever grateful for the generosity of Ike and his wife Jean,” says Ingrid Parent, UBC’s University Librarian. “Their support was crucial to the success of the Learning Centre, which has connected with lifelong learners and students at UBC and beyond. And his support for, and belief in, the transformative role of libraries was inspiring. He will be greatly missed, but his legacy will live on at the Learning Centre, and in the other worthy projects that he backed. Thank you, Ike, for your vision, passion, humour and dedication.”

Simon Neame, Director of the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre, concurs, adding that Dr. Barber never forgot the people in communities across BC who made a difference in his own life. “Dr. Barber’s passion and commitment to student learning and the people of British Columbia never wavered. With their gift for the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre, Dr. Barber and his wife Jean created a place where all are inspired to learn – about themselves, and about the world around them. The Learning Centre’s programs and services reach out beyond campus to connect communities with learning opportunities, fulfilling Dr. Barber’s vision of a facility dedicated to lifelong learning for the citizens of BC and beyond.”

Dr. Barber was born on February 14, 1923 in Edmonton, Alberta. He first came to UBC in September of 1945 and graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Forestry degree in 1950. In 1952, he qualified as a Professional Registered Forester. He was involved in the forest industry in British Columbia for 57 years, working with people at all levels and throughout the province. In 1978, at the age of 55, he founded Slocan Forest Products Ltd. and over the next 23 years built it into one of the leading lumber producers in North America. Dr. Barber retired as Chairman in February 2002.

Dr. Barber’s leadership has been recognized throughout his career. He received numerous forestry and industry awards, and has been appointed to the Order of Canada, the Order of British Columbia and the Canadian Business Hall of Fame.

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One of the massive card catalogues is being used to keep track of the 5,000-book collection donated by Denman residents.

Jean Cockburn moved to Denman after her retirement as a librarian at Douglas College. She took on the community library “as a bit of a project.”

“There was no equipment,” Cockburn says. “No trolleys, no card catalogue – all the cards were written by hand and kept in old metal drawers.”

A former colleague helped prospect for the needed items. Only one place still had card catalogues available: UBC Library’s Library Processing Centre (LPC), which was being vacated to accommodate research units and the School of Population and Public Health.

The card catalogue that made a trip to Denman Island squashed in the back of Cockburn’s Subaru wagon was one of thousands of items that were removed from the LPC. These likely would have ended up in a landfill, but for a one-woman sustainability effort co-ordinated by Mary Cheng, Library Administrative Clerk.

Where possible, Cheng saw that the Library’s surplus goods got a second life. Her careful records include sheaves of thank you letters from homeless shelters, non-profit organizations and many schools that have hauled away the Library’s unneeded furnishings – including study carrels, oak tables, assorted chairs and room dividers.

Denman’s Cockburn is using the Library’s circulation cards and due date slips. The Dora Drinkwater Library hasn’t yet gone electronic (it circulates about eight books a day), so these come in handy.

“I was really impressed with the generosity and conviviality of UBC,” Cockburn says. “It’s a very large organization and here I approached one individual, she passed it on, and everyone said, ‘Yeah, I can make this happen.’

“I feel good about it,” Cheng nods. “Everything is balanced now: the tax dollars spent, and the environment. I know the furniture went to a good home.”

Dr. William C. Gibson, one of the Library’s strongest and mostenduring supporters, passed away last year at the age of 95. His UBC legacy endures in the generations of medical students he taught, inthe vast body of his scholarly work, in his books of wry wisdom, andmost visibly in Woodward Library, one of his proudest achievements.

Born in Ottawa in 1913, Gibson grew up in Victoria. He completed a bachelor’s degree in 1933 as part of UBC’s first graduating class in commerce, then pursued medical studies at McGill and a Ph.D. at Oxford. Gibson’s distinguished career at UBC spanned 30 years, including successive posts as Researcher and Clinical Associate Professor, Director of the Kinsmen Laboratory for Neurological Research, and Professor and Head of the History of Medicine and Science Department.

At a memorial service in Vancouver, Gibson’s son-in-law described him as “a historian who looked forward,” says Gibson’s daughter Kate. “That’s exactly who he was.”

Passions and projects

Legendary stories abound about Gibson’s love of medical history books and his ability to convince wealthy friends to fund worthy projects. These two passions united when in 1960, he and several colleagues brought P.A. “Puggy” Woodward, scion of the department store family, to a dim and musty hole in the core of the Central Library. All they had to do was show him the sorry conditions in which a small treasure trove of rare and early medical texts were being stored.

Woodward emerged from the basement ready to bankroll the construction of a medical library. Gibson was instrumental in bringing rare treasures to campus that would be showcased in the building, including Laurentius Valla’s Elegant Latin Language, printed in 1476, and a rare first edition of William Harvey’s revolutionary 1628 work on blood circulation, De Motu Cordis.

“If there was something he thought was a good project, he would raise heaven and earth to get it done,” remarked Anna Leith, an Emerita UBC Librarian who became Head of Woodward Library in 1967.

“So we modestly designed a building to last 200 years, in which any wall, counter or catalogue could be moved within 20 minutes,” Gibson wrote in a 1982 speech to the National Library of Medicine. “I don’t want to build a book cemetery,” he quoted Woodward as saying.

“I want milestones of science – the first time any new discovery was published. I want the students to see these, and appreciate that UBC has them!”

Gibson’s contact with the neurology greats of the 19th and 20th centuries made him want to share those experiences with students and faculty at UBC, said Dr. Patrick L. McGeer, a student of Gibson’s in the 1950s, and now an Emeritus Professor of Psychiatry.

“He recognized the aura that went with greatness. He brought it here physically – the evidence of it – it’s all those rare books in the Woodward Memorial Room. That’s his attempt to expose UBC and the Medical School to some aspect of greatness.”

- This article originally appeared in the Friends Summer 2010 newsletter. To read the entire issue, click here.

Brittnacher , UBC Library’s first Geographic Information Systems (GIS) Librarian, arrived last year to develop a new service to support research on campus with spatial analysis.In June, an opening reception was held for the new GIS/Research Data Lab in Koerner Library. The lab houses six workstations that allow users to manipulate data and produce graphic representations of the results in geographic settings.That may mean tracking changes in sea levels, displaying the complexities of overlapping territoriesin First Nations land claims, or analyzing movements of improvising modern dancers. All this can be depicted visually and used for disciplines such as health policy, geography, political science, forestry, economics, history and social policy.

A desire for data

Pent-up demand means researchers have already started accessing the expertise of Brittnacher, who is working with an established team of data services personnel.The lab is also fostering interdisciplinary collaboration. “People come to me, saying ‘I need this data, where can I get it?’” Brittnacher says. For example, two researchers from different departments were asking for information on 19th-century British parliamentary constituency boundaries, but neither had any idea where to turn. Brittnacher found the data at the University of Portsmouth in the U.K., introduced the researchers and brought them together. He continues to assist them.

“The lab is geared toward people who don’t have access to GIS and statistical software in their own departments,” Brittnacher adds. Teaching will be another area of emphasis, with workshops geared towards GIS neophytes as well as more experienced users.

Brittnacher comes to UBC Library with extensive experience in library settings and the private sector. Prior to attending library school at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (UWM), he worked as a GIS Analyst, Urban Planner and Cartographer. Upon graduation, Brittnacher became the GIS Librarian at the American Geographical Society Library at UWM. The prospect of coming to build a GIS service from the ground up proved impossible to resist. “I wasn’t looking when I saw the job advertised,” he says.Brittnacher had a long-time interest in BC, dating back to a cross-country family trip he navigated at age 14 that passed through Vancouver. “I knew that this was a part of the continent I wanted to live in,” he adds, “so I jumped at the opportunity.”

- This article originally appeared in the Friends 2010 Summer newsletter. To read the rest of the issue online click here.

The Logie family at the exhibit in March 2010

In November 2009, UBC Library held a standing-room only event at the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre to celebrate the donation and honour Richardson Logie and her family. University Librarian Ingrid Parent also used the occasion to announce the Richardson Logie Chronicles of Pride Fund, which will help promote and maintain the collection (several portraits were on display at the event).

“We’re grateful for Patricia’s donation to UBC Library,” Parent says. “Her portraits of Aboriginal role models and community leaders are a wonderful contribution to the University and to our cultural conversations.”

Chronicles of Pride is also accompanied by a book (Chronicles of Pride: A Journey of Discovery, published by Detselig Enterprises Ltd.), a teacher resource guide and a video that contains profiles of the portrait subjects. These resources are available at various UBC Library branches, including Xwi7xwa Library, the only Aboriginal branch of a university library in Canada.

Learn more about her by reading her profile in UBC Reports, or explore her vision for the Library in her messages in the Library’s Strategic Plan.

Learn more about this fascinating project in the media coverage, or by exploring their website.

Henry Yu, MP Alice Wong (Richmond) and Ralph Stanton, Head of Rare Books and Special Collections

The David Lam Management Library is currently under construction.

The David Lam Management Research Library at UBC

For more information on the David Lam Management Research Library, visit their website.

Born in Edmonton, Alberta, Dr. Irving K. Barber graduated from the University of British Columbia with a Bachelor of Science in Forestry in 1950. A prominent figure within the forest industry in British Columbia for 57 years, he founded Slocan Forest Products Ltd. at the age of 55, and developed the company into a leading lumber producer in North America. Dr. Barber retired as Chairman in February 2002.

Irving and Jean Barber

Over his formidable career, Dr. Barber has been named Distinguished Forester of the Year, and awarded the Forest Excellence Award in Communications for his involvement in the publication of The Working Forest of British Columbia. In 1997, he was presented with the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year award for the Pacific Region and in May 2002 was awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Law degree by the University of Northern British Columbia.

The I. K. Barber Enhanced Forestry Laboratory at UNBC, the Irving K. Barber Diabetes Research Endowment Fund at UBC and the Ike Barber Human Islet Transplant Laboratory at Vancouver Hospital in partnership with UBC are just a few examples of Dr. Barber’s instrumental role in promoting research programs in British Columbia. His $20 million gift towards the creation of the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre strengthened Dr. Barber’s dedication to the intellectual, social, cultural and economic development of the people throughout the province.

Mrs. Jean Barber has made significant donations to the Jean C. Barber Lodge for the BC Cancer Agency in Vancouver, as well as for artwork in the IKBLC.

The Barbers have three children, nine grandchildren, and fifteen great-grandchildren.

The Irving K. Barber Learning Centre