For the past 27 years, more than 6,700 alumni, faculty, staff, and friends have demonstrated their appreciation and support of the Library by donating more than $2.5 million to the UBC Library Collection Fund.

These funds have allowed the library to purchase, among many other resources, the Smithsonian Trade Literature and Smithsonian Magazine, 19th Century Collections Online, British Newspapers 1785 to 1920, Zoological Record Archive (Web of Science) and China Data Online. These resources provide students, faculty, and community members with new ways to access both historical records and recent research across a wide variety of disciplines.

Through the Gale Points to the Past Collection, UBC Library is able to make these resources available to all of British Columbia’s 4.6 million residents through www.pointstothepast.ca. This database of nearly 200 million pages of digital historical content will enrich learning and research in subject dis­ciplines including Canadian, American, British and World History from 1400-2012, English, Journalism, Political Studies, First Nations Studies, Science Technology and Medicine, Women and Gender Studies, Theatre Studies, and History of Banking and Finance. Content in the database includes digitized versions of periodicals such as the Economist, the Financial Times, and Associated Press content, as well as digitized materials from The Smithsonian Institution.