It was a year marked by momentum at Western. Punctuated by standout research achievements, community and industry partnerships and global impact, the Western community demonstrated excellence throughout 2025. Students, staff, faculty and …
Western Libraries
Famed French author finds new life online
Geneviève de Viveiros never expected 21st-Century tools to lend such important insights into a 19th-Century mind. Then again, who knew a popular video website that gave the world Justin Bieber, Gangnam Style and Grumpy Cat could also augment our understanding into French novelist Émile Zola?
Selections that swing for the fences
It’s root, root for the home team, if they don’t win it’s a shame when Collections and Content Strategies librarian Elizabeth Mantz takes her turn on Read. Watch. Listen.
Western acquires digital ‘gold mine’ of magazines
Western Libraries is now home to a digitized database of four of North America’s most influential newsmagazines of the past 150 years.
Database helps put Canadian tornadoes on the map
No longer will important information about severe storms across the country – information that could save countless lives – be simply gone with the wind.
Opening your eyes, ears to possibilities
Of course you are going to be wowed by the amazing sights and sounds at your fingertips that you never knew existed when Joanne Paterson, Head, Research & Scholarly Communication, Western Libraries, takes a turn on Read. Watch. Listen.
Taking you to Hellboy and back
Buy your ticket and come ride an amazing, thunderstruck rockabilly rocketship to Hellboy and back when Dan Sich, Teaching and Learning Librarian, E-Learning, at Western Libraries takes a turn on Read. Watch. Listen.
Gifts, project open door wider to city history
A few taps on any smartphone can tell you that Eldon House, London’s oldest residence, was once home of the Harris Family, but it takes a collection like the Harris Family Fonds to gain a deeper understand of what that legacy means.
Wiki project adds Western knowledge to mix
From the prosaic to the arcane, Wikipedia offers a world of factual tidbits, images and data about millions of people, places and things. Now a group of volunteers is looking to add Western-rich content to a number of entries in the crowd-sourced public database.
Publisher, university clash stokes debate
The decision by one of the world’s largest university systems to end its relationship with the world’s largest scholarly publisher is just as much a clash over universal open access as it is about unsustainable costs, according to postsecondary libraries officials.
Times Higher Ed digital among new, free publications
Western faculty, staff and students now have access to the latest higher-education news from across the world, through free access to digital newsletters of Times Higher Education.
Library reno consultations to start in January
Western’s largest and busiest library is “past-due” for a revitalization, and detailed consultations on its transformation will take place with the campus community during next few months, said Catherine Steeves, vice-provost and chief librarian. Opened in 1972, The...
Western Libraries takes Barnett legacy into future
In 1918, visionary bibliophile John Davis Barnett donated his personal collection of 40,000 books to enrich the relatively modest library holdings at Western – at the time, housing less than 1,000 works. His only condition was that every page be available to “any earnest seeker of knowledge.” Today, Western Libraries is honouring that century-old pledge by extending the reach of the Barnett collection further than the philanthropic curator and would-be-librarian could have ever imagined.