The X̱wi7x̱wa Library is an Indigenous library at the

Vancouver Vancouver ( ) is a major city in western Canada, located in the Lower Mainland region of British Columbia. As the List of cities in British Columbia, most populous city in the province, the 2021 Canadian census recorded 662,248 people in the ...

campus of the

University of British Columbia The University of British Columbia (UBC) is a public university, public research university with campuses near Vancouver and in Kelowna, British Columbia. Established in 1908, it is British Columbia's oldest university. The university ranks a ...

. The library, which draws its name from the Squamish word for ''echo'', was named by Chief Simon Baker of the Squamish Nation. The library is notable for its approaches to organizing First Nations knowledge and major collections and holdings in a way that expresses Indigenous thought and culture. Holding some 15,000 items, it is fully integrated with the main library of UBC.

History

X̱wi7x̱wa (pronounced "whei wha") Library began as a small collection of Aboriginal materials in a mobile home. The collection was maintained in conjunction with the University of British Columbia's (UBC) NITEP Indigenous Teacher Education Program. In 1993, the library became the First Nations House of Learning Library, part of a

longhouse A longhouse or long house is a type of long, proportionately narrow, single-room building for communal dwelling. It has been built in various parts of the world including Asia, Europe, and North America. Many were built from timber and often rep ...

for Indigenous students and scholars. The university's senate later established a X̱wi7x̱wa librarian position in 1995, which was first held by Gene Joseph. The library became a branch of the UBC Library in 2005. It is the first First Nations branch of a Canadian academic library. The library began digitizing materials related to the First Nations House of Learning Longhouse in 2008, with the goal of sharing university resources with Aboriginal people worldwide. As of 2015, the library held over 15,000 items, consisting primarily of Aboriginal materials, including those produced by First Nations peoples, organizations, schools, and tribal councils.

Building

The primary donor and namesake for the library building was William Bellman; he was named X̱wi7x̱wa by Squamish Elder and Chief, Koot-la-cha. The library building's design is inspired by buildings of the

Interior Salish The Interior Salish languages are one of the two main branches of the Salishan languages, Salishan language family, the other being Coast Salish languages, Coast Salish. It can be further divided into Northern and Southern subbranches. The first S ...

nations. Its primary structure is called a Kekuko in the Chinook jargon, a S7istken in 7'Ucwalmicwts, and a pit house in English. The library building is integrated into the library's logo, which was created by

Tsimshian The Tsimshian (; tsi, Ts’msyan or Tsm'syen) are an Indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest Coast, Indigenous people of the Pacific Northwest Coast. Their communities are mostly in coastal British Columbia in Terrace, British Columbia, Terr ...

artist Glen Wood. This logo represents the Raven transforming the university. The windows are decorated with the names of approximately eight hundred donors to the library.

Classification and cataloging

The X̱wi7x̱wa Library uses First Nations House of Learning (FNHL) Subject Headings, a local taxonomy that remedies many of the shortcomings of the

Library of Congress Subject Headings The Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH) comprise a thesaurus (in the information science sense, a controlled vocabulary) of subject headings, maintained by the United States Library of Congress, for use in bibliographic records. LC Subject ...

with regard to First Nations materials. This classification system arranges First Nations geographically and refers to them by their own names (autonyms), rather than alphabetically by their European names. This is a British Columbia-specific variant of the

Brian Deer Classification System The Brian Deer Classification System (BDC) is a library classification system used to organize materials in libraries with specialized Indigenous collections. The system was created in the mid-1970s by Canadian librarian A. Brian Deer Kahnawake Mo ...

, developed by librarian

A. Brian Deer Alec Brian Deer (1945 – January 12, 2019), ''Tionerahtoken'' (Mohawk), known as Brian Deer, was a librarian from Kahnawake known for the development of a high-level, original library classification system that expresses Indigenous knowledge str ...

( Mohawk) in the late 20th century. This organization system gives priority to relationships in its structure, reflecting an Indigenous worldview. In 2004, the 11,000 FNHL headings were lost due to a system migration. They were not recovered until 2009. The library also records a subjective measure of suitability of materials that may be used to teach Indigenous children. This practice rejects dominant conceptions of cataloging as "objective". It recognizes the frequent misrepresentation of Indigenous peoples by mainstream European-Canadian and American cultures.

References

External links

Official site

Classification system

Bibliography of publications about X̱wi7x̱wa Library
{{Authority control University of British Columbia libraries Academic libraries in Canada First Nations librarianship Indigenous culture in Canada