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news.library.ualberta.ca
  • BLOG HOME
  • About
    • Author Profiles
    • Five Things You Need to Know About the Library
    • Cinq choses à savoir sur la bibliothèque
  • Collections
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    • Cinq choses à savoir sur la bibliothèque
Monthly Archives

May 2023

    Digitization Spotlight: Our Voice

    by Guest Author May 23, 2023
    written by Guest Author

    Written by Logan Thienes, Digitization Assistant and first-year Digital Humanities student

    The newly-digitized Our Voice collection is a complement to the digital Alberta Street News collection, which was scanned by the U of A Library in 2022 (you can read about that project here!). Both are Edmonton street newspapers, created to serve and be sold by unhoused, disabled, and unemployed people living in Edmonton.

    Our Voice, originally titled Spare Change from 1994-1996, was a spinoff from a Vancouver street newspaper also called Spare Change. Edmonton’s Our Voice first appears as a column in a March 1994 edition of Vancouver’s Spare Change, with the inaugural edition of Edmonton’s own Spare Change coming a month later in April 1994, and was renamed Our Voice two years later, in April 1996, keeping that name until the final issue in May 2005. The digital archive contains issues from Our Voice’s entire lifespan, including its first appearance in the Vancouver paper.

    Street life was the #1 concern for Our Voice. Recurring columns include stories from people living on the street, news on politics, and programs like free food events or music festivals. 

    Our Voice (February 1997, Vol. 4 No. 2)

    Vendors on the street sold Our Voice by donation. These vendors had a code of conduct for talking to passersby, and wore badges to show they were approved by the paper. Every issue included a “Vendor Profile” – a short profile of someone licensed by Our Voice to sell papers on the streets, describing their personal goals, struggles, and experiences selling the paper.

    But that’s not all! On top of those regular features, Our Voice also interviewed celebrities like Tragically Hip singer Gord Downie, director Michael Moore, and activist David Suzuki, among others. Content also included stories from across Canada and the world. Both serious topics and humour were included. The paper also featured art from people in the community and serial fiction stories.

    Major figures interviewed include:

    • David Suzuki (activist)
    • Michael Moore (director)
    • Megan Follows (actress)
    • Gord Downie (singer-songwriter)
    • Raj Pannu (NDP politician)
    • Maude Barlow (activist)
    • Ralph Klein (Alberta premier)
    • Robert Munsch (children’s author)
    Post 9/11 coverage in Our Voice October 2001

    Our Voice’s late 90s-early 2000s lifespan let it cover many world-changing topics. Issues include the September 11th attacks, the Iraq War, global warming, and more. This period also saw the Internet skyrocket in popularity, to both the fascination and detriment of small-scale newspapers. Many different (now-defunct) websites or web technologies are mentioned, making these papers a time capsule of the early Internet.

    The most serious content in Our Voice covered the dangers of street life. Accounts of violence, including from police, appear regularly. Obituaries memorialize people, typically either vendors who worked selling Our Voice or workers involved with food banks or other support networks. Oftentimes, people died under mysterious circumstances or due to the general harshness of street life, and Our Voice would provide deep and compassionate obituaries for those individuals. Thanks to this, the paper serves as a record of events and people that might be ignored by more mainstream sources.

    Digitized in-house at Cameron Library, and hosted through our partnership with Internet Archive, Edmonton’s Spare Change and Our Voice are now available to view here, alongside the previously digitized Alberta Street News collections.

    Love us on the blog? Then you’ll love us on social media! Check us out at @uofalibrary on Instagram, & Twitter!

    This content is licenced under a CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 Creative Commons licence.

    May 23, 2023 0 comment
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  • Moving the Scott Library’s Collection: Where have all the books gone?

    by Guest Author May 17, 2023
    by Guest Author May 17, 2023

    University of Alberta Library is celebrating the new Geoffrey & Robyn Sperber Health Sciences Library, which is anticipated to open in Fall 2023. This post is part of a series that will showcase the Sperber Library over the next several months. This post was written by Connie Winther, Head, Faculty Engagement (Health Sciences) Most people have moved houses or apartments. This requires a lot of boxes, a truck or two, a moving…

  • Vote Now for the 2023 Images of Research People’s Choice

    by Junelle Mah May 15, 2023
    by Junelle Mah May 15, 2023

    The University of Alberta Library, in partnership with the University of Alberta’s Faculty of Graduate and Research Studies (FGSR), is pleased to open the People’s Choice Voting for our 2023 Images of Research Competition and Exhibition (IOR). Our committee was thrilled to receive 89 spectacular entries into this year’s competition. Our five judges had the challenge of whittling this substantial pool down to 24 semi-finalists. To Vote:To view our selected semi-finalists’ work…

  • Explorer nos collections : Auteurs Canadiens d’origine asiatique

    by Elisabet Ingibergsson May 9, 2023
    by Elisabet Ingibergsson May 9, 2023

    Parcourir les rayons de la bibliothèque de l’Université de l’Alberta peut être un peu compliqué. Nous avons huit bibliothèques réparties sur quatre campus pour vous servir! Vous avez également accès aux ressources physiques dans les bibliothèques NEOS. Vous cherchez par où commencer ? Cette exposition de livres virtuels explore un sujet et constitue un échantillon pour vous aider à commencer. En ce Mois du patrimoine asiatique, nous partageons avec vous une exposition virtuelle de…

  • Browsing our Collections – Asian Canadian Authors (part 2)

    by Elisabet Ingibergsson May 9, 2023
    by Elisabet Ingibergsson May 9, 2023

    Browsing the library shelves at the University of Alberta Library can be a fairly daunting process. We have eight library locations spread across three campuses! Where to begin? We also have access to physical resources at our partner NEOS libraries. This virtual book display celebrates Asian Heritage Month and is a sampling of titles to get you started. Two years ago we celebrated Asian Heritage Month with a virtual book display showcasing fiction,…

  • Connecting. Engaging. Creating. Representing Vision through Design

    by Guest Author May 4, 2023
    by Guest Author May 4, 2023

    University of Alberta Library is celebrating the new Geoffrey & Robyn Sperber Health Sciences Library, which is anticipated to open in Fall 2023. This post is part of a series that will showcase the Sperber Library over the next several months. This post was written by Janet Koshuta, from Start Architecture As architects, engineers, and designers, we are in a unique position to be able to articulate the quality of space in…

  • Folding, Unfolding, Refolding Maps in the Community

    by Guest Author May 2, 2023
    by Guest Author May 2, 2023

    This post was written by GIS Librarian, Larry Laliberte Map staff conduct tours that bring the community into the library to interact with the collection. We also bring spatial materials from the collection out to interact with the community. The following sketches are three recent examples of maps as troubadours. Driven off campus, onto hastily arranged tables at Harry Ainlay school. Walked across campus, to be overlaid on the Indigenous Peoples Atlas of…

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