Location: 1961 East Mall, Vancouver, B.C. Canada V6T 1Z1
Contact: 604-822-2883, wd.ref@ubc.ca
Access: Must register for special collections
Website address: http://woodward.library.ubc.ca/ and http://rbsc.library.ubc.ca/
The Woodward Library at the University of British Columbia covers a range of subject areas, including agriculture, biology, botany, chemistry, computer science, dentistry, earth and ocean sciences, engineering, food science, forestry, mathematics, medicine, nursing, nutrition, pharmacy, physics, public health, statistics, wood science and zoology. Woodward Library has the largest biomedical collection in Western Canada and a strong history of medicine and science collection.
Woodward Library has several unique special collections. The William C. Gibson History of Medicine and Science Collection is the rare and historical medicine and science collection. The Gerald W. Korn Obstetrics & Gynecology Collection includes a fine collection of early obstetrics, gynecology and midwifery books. The Rodger Stanton Memorial Library Collection was created in honor of Rodger Stanton (1930-1977), a BC surgeon. The Peggy Sutherland Site contains on-line resources in the areas of nursing, allied health, breast cancer and women’s health. Special collections also contain approximately 20 collections of letters and manuscripts including those of Sir Charles Scott Sherrington, Sir William Osler, Joseph Thomas Clover, and John Snow. The following two collections of letters have been digitized and transcribed and are available on the UBC Library’s Digital Collections website: Charles Darwin’s letters and Florence Nightingale’s letters. There are also oral histories, in commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the UBC Medical School. In addition to the artifacts on display in the Charles Woodward Memorial Room and Sherrington, there is collection of feeding bottles. For more on special collections, view here.
UBC Library Digital Collections include Andrew McCormick Maps and Prints; Capilano Timber Company fonds; Emma Crosby Letters; Ethel Johns Fonds; History of Nursing in Pacific Canada; Infant Feeders Collection; manuscripts, rare books, and photographs. Emma Crosby’s letters help us to understand mission work as something much more complex than simple tales of conversion by men invested in Christianity. Ethel Johns was the first director of the School of Nursing at the University of British Columbia. The fonds includes correspondence, reports, minutes, notes, photographs, drafts of Johns’ unfinished autobiography and related papers, and manuscripts of a considerable number of her articles and speeches the majority of which were published.