The work began with a theoretical investigation into the relationship between the construction of architecture and the construction of cultural scripts of gender. Gender, as divided into the distinct cultural scripts of masculine and feminine, is based on dichotomous thought which can traced back to Greek philosophy. The mind/body split, originating with Plato, underlies a host of others: reason/intuition, justice/compassion, cognition/sensation, culture/nature, public/private, order/chaos, and ultimately, male/female. These pairs, each a cultural construct in itself, are conceived of as binary opposites, in which the former reigns supreme over the latter, rather than as equally valued ends of a continuum. The problem is, therefore, that the construct of gender, based on Platonic dichotomous thought and as such representative of the exclusionary practices of Western culture, is reinforced by architectural discourse and practice which accepts the basis of the construct as a pre-spatial given. I propose that the beginnings of a solution may lie in the rethinking and reconfiguration of the construct of gender from one based on dichotomous thought to one that allows for the possibility of a continuum amongst difference. The problem then becomes the formulation of an architectural language which indeed does not assume dichotomous thought as its basis, but rather holds dichotomy in balance with multiplicity, opposite with continuum, singularity with plurality. The site I have chosen is the triangle of land bounded by Stanley Park and the Lost Lagoon to the north, Chilco Street and Lagoon Drive to the south, Georgia Street to the east, and Stanley Park to the west. The site currently contains a bus loop, a concession stand, the "Nature House" and a public washroom. It is a hinge caught between the edge of the park, the urban grid of the West End apartment blocks, and the traffic corridor of Georgia Street. It spans the border between the city and the park and as such is conducive to the rethinking of the city/park boundary (or dichotomy). A study of the current use patterns of the multiple public's using the place (cyclists, pedestrians, buses, tourists, locals, young, old, male, female etc) revealed the site as a series of striations and boundaries in terms of their physical formal placement in the site and spatial relationships to each other.;A formal investigation resulted in an understanding of the site in terms of a series of platforms and retaining walls -- allowing possibilities for the beginnings of transformations of how boundaries/thresholds establish relationships between things. The program, or the series of overlaid programs, involves the integration of a civic program (a public library) into park program (sea wall and Stanley Park circulation routes, concession stand, the Nature House, public washrooms) as well as city infrastructure (bus loop: road ways, lamp posts, bus wires), again acting as a tool by which boundaries can be rethought. In an overall sense, working with this site and these programs also has led to an attempt to understand the construction of the site/building not only as a mediation between the city and the park, but also as a way to re-imagine the thresholds between architecture, landscape architecture and infrastructure.

This thesis examines the Vancouver Peretz Institute Library, a Yiddish language library housed in a secular humanist Jewish community centre. The organization provides supplementary schooling for children, and holds seniors' groups, adult classes, and special events. In this thesis the organization's library is placed in the context of Yiddish library history, the history of the Yiddish secular school movement, and the mainstream Jewish community in Vancouver. Attention is given to the organization's founding in 1945, and its creation of the library in 1976, as well as its relationship to the Vancouver Jewish community and other organizations in the Yiddish cultural movement, such as YIVO and the National Yiddish Book Center. The school's philosophy was highly influenced by the Holocaust and its destruction of much of Yiddish-speaking Jewry; by the left-wing affiliations of many members and much of the Yiddish cultural community; and by the emergence of McCarthyism in Vancouver's Jewish community. The library emerged from the personal vision of a member who is a Holocaust survivor, Paulina Kirman. Although never heavily used, and although financial difficulties are a constant factor in the organization, the library has been maintained due to the institute's attachment to Yiddish culture. The future of community Yiddish libraries such as this one is examined in light of technical and social factors, including cataloguing and preservation difficulties and the development of a Yiddish literary canon. Finally, the Vancouver Peretz Institute Library is placed in the context of the larger issue of the role of Yiddish in modern Jewish identities. Although usage of the Yiddish language is in decline, the continuation of this library illustrates the symbolic role which it continues to play in the imagination of Diaspora Jews. The marginality of Yiddish appeals especially to those with emotional connections to secular, left-wing, and other minority Jewish identities.

Library literature and educational writings appraising school libraries imply that if qualitative and quantitative standards of school libraries were sufficiently high, the students would be proficient in the knowledge, of the use, of books and libraries. No evidence, however, is presented to support this assumption. The lack of empirical evidence prompted the present study as an attempt to discover if a positive correlation does exist between qualitative and quantitative standards of school libraries and the students’ knowledge of the use of hooks and libraries. The instrument used to ascertain the qualitative and quantitative standards of nine senior secondary schools in three British Columbia school districts was a closed-question interview questionnaire consisting of four major divisions. The results of the questionnaire were tabulated as numerical scores and placed in rank order for each of the four major divisions and for the total. Two hundred seventy-eight students in nine senior secondary schools were tested under standard procedures using the test A Library Orientation Test for College Freshmen. Intact groups of English 40 or English 91 students were tested in each of the nine schools. Test score results were tabulated for each part of the nine sub-tests for the test as a whole. Means of the results for each of the nine parts of the test were tabulated by school and placed in rank order. Correlations between mean score ranks and interview questionnaire score ranks were computed for each of the nine sub-tests and, the total test. In this study it was found that generally a low positive rank correlation exists. The correlation did not depart significantly from zero. It is suggested that, further studies be conducted, to isolate and to control variables which may have a bearing on the relationship between qualitative and quantitative standards of school libraries and the students' knowledge of the use of hooks and libraries. / Education, Faculty of / Graduate

The work began with a theoretical investigation into the relationship between the construction of architecture and the construction of cultural scripts of gender. Gender, as divided into the distinct cultural scripts of masculine and feminine, is based on dichotomous thought which can traced back to Greek philosophy. The mind/body split, originating with Plato, underlies a host of others: reason/intuition, justice/compassion, cognition/sensation, culture/nature, public/private, order/chaos, and ultimately, male/female. These pairs, each a cultural construct in itself, are conceived of as binary opposites, in which the former reigns supreme over the latter, rather than as equally valued ends of a continuum. The problem is, therefore, that the construct of gender, based on Platonic dichotomous thought and as such representative of the exclusionary practices of Western culture, is reinforced by architectural discourse and practice which accepts the basis of the construct as a pre-spatial given. I propose that the beginnings of a solution may lie in the rethinking and reconfiguration of the construct of gender from one based on dichotomous thought to one that allows for the possibility of a continuum amongst difference. The problem then becomes the formulation of an architectural language which indeed does not assume dichotomous thought as its basis, but rather holds dichotomy in balance with multiplicity, opposite with continuum, singularity with plurality. The site I have chosen is the triangle of land bounded by Stanley Park and the Lost Lagoon to the north, Chilco Street and Lagoon Drive to the south, Georgia Street to the east, and Stanley Park to the west. The site currently contains a bus loop, a concession stand, the "Nature House" and a public washroom. It is a hinge caught between the edge of the park, the urban grid of the West End apartment blocks, and the traffic corridor of Georgia Street. It spans the border between the city and the park and as such is conducive to the rethinking of the city/park boundary (or dichotomy). A study of the current use patterns of the multiple public's using the place (cyclists, pedestrians, buses, tourists, locals, young, old, male, female etc) revealed the site as a series of striations and boundaries in terms of their physical formal placement in the site and spatial relationships to each other.;A formal investigation resulted in an understanding of the site in terms of a series of platforms and retaining walls -- allowing possibilities for the beginnings of transformations of how boundaries/thresholds establish relationships between things. The program, or the series of overlaid programs, involves the integration of a civic program (a public library) into park program (sea wall and Stanley Park circulation routes, concession stand, the Nature House, public washrooms) as well as city infrastructure (bus loop: road ways, lamp posts, bus wires), again acting as a tool by which boundaries can be rethought. In an overall sense, working with this site and these programs also has led to an attempt to understand the construction of the site/building not only as a mediation between the city and the park, but also as a way to re-imagine the thresholds between architecture, landscape architecture and infrastructure. / Applied Science, Faculty of / Architecture and Landscape Architecture (SALA), School of / Graduate

This thesis examines the Vancouver Peretz Institute Library, a Yiddish language library housed in a secular humanist Jewish community centre. The organization provides supplementary schooling for children, and holds seniors' groups, adult classes, and special events. In this thesis the organization's library is placed in the context of Yiddish library history, the history of the Yiddish secular school movement, and the mainstream Jewish community in Vancouver. Attention is given to the organization's founding in 1945, and its creation of the library in 1976, as well as its relationship to the Vancouver Jewish community and other organizations in the Yiddish cultural movement, such as YIVO and the National Yiddish Book Center. The school's philosophy was highly influenced by the Holocaust and its destruction of much of Yiddish-speaking Jewry; by the left-wing affiliations of many members and much of the Yiddish cultural community; and by the emergence of McCarthyism in Vancouver's Jewish community. The library emerged from the personal vision of a member who is a Holocaust survivor, Paulina Kirman. Although never heavily used, and although financial difficulties are a constant factor in the organization, the library has been maintained due to the institute's attachment to Yiddish culture. The future of community Yiddish libraries such as this one is examined in light of technical and social factors, including cataloguing and preservation difficulties and the development of a Yiddish literary canon. Finally, the Vancouver Peretz Institute Library is placed in the context of the larger issue of the role of Yiddish in modern Jewish identities. Although usage of the Yiddish language is in decline, the continuation of this library illustrates the symbolic role which it continues to play in the imagination of Diaspora Jews. The marginality of Yiddish appeals especially to those with emotional connections to secular, left-wing, and other minority Jewish identities. / Arts, Faculty of / Library, Archival and Information Studies (SLAIS), School of / Graduate

One of the characteristics of adult education is the degree to which it is dispersed throughout society. Much adult education is practiced in organizations and institutions that have purposes other than adult education. Schroeder (1970, p. 37) has suggested a category of adult education agencies (Type III agencies) established to serve both the educational and non-educational needs of the community, agencies in which "adult education is an allied function employed to fill only some of the needs which agencies recognize as their responsibility." The purpose of this study was to examine adult education in Schroeder's Type III agencies using libraries and museums as examples. The study addressed the definition and description of adult education, the importance of adult education relative to other functions of the organization, and the purposes for which the organizations used adult education. A comparative analysis of the adult education function of three libraries and three museums was conducted. Print materials (annual reports and publicity brochures) and interviews with the person responsible for programming were used as data sources. Analysis of the findings was done in three stages: single case analysis (within case analysis), analysis of libraries and museums (within category analysis), and comparison of libraries and museums (across category analysis). Many definitions of adult education were found. Most described the purposes of adult education rather than the process of teaching and learning. It was also found that the importance of adult education varied among the organizations studied. Adult education was less important than other organizational functions in four of the six organizations studied. It was as important as other functions in one organization and was not ranked in one organization. Five uses for adult education were found: stimulation (encouraging better use of the library or museum), enrichment (adding extra information), extension (enlarging community contacts), service (filling a social need), and advocacy (promoting social change). Generally, libraries used programming for extension and museums used it for enrichment. This study has contributed to understanding adult education in Type III organizations by describing some ways non-professional adult educators view adult education. It has also suggested some contextual factors that influence the adult education function in those organizations and has suggested a variety of purposes for which adult education could be used. / Education, Faculty of / Educational Studies (EDST), Department of / Graduate