Asian Library is pleased to announce that Tomoko Kitayama Yen has joined the Library as the new Japanese Studies Librarian.

Tomoko has almost 15 years of experience working at UBC Library as a Library Assistant in collections and technical services. Her library career started as a Japanese Cataloguer at Asian Library, and she is thrilled to return to the branch in her new role, bringing with her a passion for Japanese collections.

Tomoko has a B.A. in history from UBC and has recently completed the coursework for the Master of Library and Information Studies degree at UBC’s iSchool. She once worked for a Tokyo publishing company and taught Japanese in private language schools in Vancouver. Her career focus has been to make information resources accessible at the backend of the library operation, working on acquisitions, cataloguing and collection maintenance. Tomoko is very excited to move onto a role that allows her to work directly with faculty, students and community at the beautiful Asian Centre.

Tomoko is interested in many areas of studies, such as community-oriented librarianship, knowledge organization and classification of non-mainstream disciplines, digital scholarship, and the history of the book. Above all, Tomoko is eager to be of service to the thriving Japan studies communities on campus and beyond. Her goal is to be a facilitator and collaborator to help UBC scholars, including faculty, students and community users discover and make the most of the world’s information resources. Consider Tomoko as a member of your research and learning team. Please contact her at 604-822-0960 or tomoko.kitayama@ubc.ca to make an appointment to discuss how she can best support you.