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July 2007 Berkeley faculty member Michael Eisen, a leading advocate for free, online dissemination of scientific research, discusses recent developments in the open-access movement. The story also comments on the skyrocketing prices for scholarly journals, and how they affect the UC Berkeley Library. One of the administrators quoted is Chuck Eckman, associate university librarian and director of collections at Berkeley. He warns that without increases to its budget, the campus library faces a shortfall of roughly $1.4 million in 2008 — with a commensurate reduction in journal, book, and digital-resource acquisitions — and a still-larger deficit in 2009.
Paintings and drawings about Abu Ghraib by renowned Colombian artist Fernando Botero are on display in Doe Library through Friday, March 23. The Center for Latin American Studies, which sponsored the exhibit, organized an accompanying series of academic programs. With plentiful media coverage, public interest has been strong, and the library has welcomed a steady stream of visitors to the exhibit. CLAS chairman Harley Shaiken, who initiated the exhibit's display at Berkeley, said "A library is a place which has enormously controversial and provocative ideas at its core. The only difference is that we're putting these works on the walls instead of on the shelves."
The late U.S. Congressman Robert T. Matsui's papers, including documentation of legislative efforts surrounding the North American Free Trade Agreement, welfare reform, base closures and Japanese-American reparations, have been donated to the Bancroft Library. U.S. Congresswoman Doris Matsui (D-California) who, like her husband, attended UC Berkeley, said the campus is special because "for Bob, it is the place where the ideals of justice and equality he formed in his youth took root to become the foundation for his lifetime of public service. It is my hope that Bob's papers will provide insight to the positive role of public service and serve as an invaluable resource to researchers on the history of Sacramento and the United States Congress."
The Environmental Design Library recently acquired a first edition of the earliest original American work on architecture: Asher Benjamin’s Country Builder's Assistant: Containing a Collection of New Designs of Carpentry and Architecture Which Will Be Particularly Useful to Country Workmen in General (Greenfield, Mass., Thomas Dickman, printer, 1797). This extraordinary addition to its rare book collection was purchased through the UCB Library Michael Reese Library Endowment Fund. View pictures and read more.
Ancient papyri from an Egyptian excavation conducted for UC Berkeley, more than a century ago have arrived on campus after a circuitous journey worthy of a mystery novel. Following their discovery in Egypt, the priceless papyri were sent to a German conservator, hidden in Berlin during World War II, concealed from East Germans intent on seizing them, smuggled to West Berlin and stashed in a shop, and stored in Switzerland. One roll was shipped to Boston in the 1930s, but the others remained hidden until the 1960s, when they, too, were shipped to Boston. They remained there until this fall, when they were returned to the Bancroft Library’s Center for Tebtunis Papyri for preservation and study.
175 friends of the University Library attended the annual dinner in the library on Friday, November 3. The event was an opportunity for Library friends and supporters to enjoy a celebratory evening, including a lavish catered dinner, in Berkeley’s Doe Memorial Library. The program, held in the Morrison Library and hosted by University Librarian Tom Leonard, featured three recent library authors discussing their latest publications. Robert M. Senkewicz described his book “Testimonios: Early California through the Eyes of Women, 1815-1848.” Co-authored with Rose Marie Beebe, the book highlights thirteen firsthand accounts, gathered as part of Hubert Howe Bancroft’s oral history project, by women who lived through the Gold Rush and dramatic societal changes. Bancroft staffer Susan Snyder related the story behind her history of camping, “The Way We Camped.” Finally, Bob Hirst gave guests a preview of Mark Twain’s complete Autobiography. At Twain’s direction, the complete Autobiography was suppressed until one hundred years after the author’s death, and the Mark Twain Project plans a major edition of it in 2010.
In Past Tents: The Way We Camped, the Bancroft’s Susan Snyder explores the great outdoors in the days before Therm-a-Rest, and finds a world both strange and strangely familiar. Published this fall by Heyday Books/Bancroft Library, Past Tents is a light-hearted trek through rare historical photographs, obscure personal journals, papers, magazine ads, and other artifacts culled from the Bancroft’s collections.
A $3 million donation from businesswoman Florence Fang, former publisher of the San Francisco Examiner will close the funding gap for construction of the campus's new C.V. Starr East Asian Library and Chang-Lin Tien Center for East Asian Studies. When it opens in fall 2007, the library will be the first freestanding building ever constructed on an American university campus for East Asian collections, underscoring UC Berkeley's long-term commitment to East Asia and the academic stature of East Asian Studies at UC Berkeley.
Projects on Mark Twain and on oral history, both housed at the Bancroft Library, have received recent awards. The Mark Twain Papers and Project is one of 54 to receive a “We the People” award from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH). The award recognizes the Bancroft Library project as a model program that advances “the study, teaching, and understanding of American history and culture.” The writer himself would probably find the award apt, given his self-description as “not an American, but the American.” Learn more about the Mark Twain Papers and Project--the largest scholarly publishing effort devoted to a single writer.
The Disability History Program, housed at Bancroft Library’s Regional Oral History Office (ROHO), has also been recognized recently for its excellence. It received the 2006 Arts and Culture Recognition Award from the Corporation on Disabilities and Telecommunication (CDT). As CDT states, the program is an “extraordinary undertaking, with its extensive in-depth interviews of disabled individuals who have been at the forefront of the disability rights and culture movement through their work as activists and artists.” More than 100 oral histories as well as a rich collection of personal papers and records of key organizations are all accessible through ROHO’s website.
The Media Resources Center is a walk-in iPod of audio-visual delights with a collection of videotapes, DVDs, and laser discs now verging on 30,000 titles — possibly the largest at any university in the U.S. — and counting. Since taking the helm of the MRC (www.lib.berkeley.edu/MRC) in 1984, librarian Gary Handman has steadily added to its once-modest holdings, helping to guide the university into an era dominated by visual images and guiding academics, many of whose hearts are with Gutenberg and the printed word, to moving images that will add another dimension to their teaching and research.
Library and campus friends gathered on May 11, 2006 in celebration of the newly named Heyns Reading Room in Doe Library. Roger W. Heyns, who served as Chancellor from 1965 to 1971, is described as a leader who stayed calm and fair through many crises, holding the university together through the height of student dissent and anti-war protests. Many key campus and library friends and donors attended the event, including former chancellors Al Bowker and Mike Heyman. Former UC president David Gardner formally dedicated the room. At the champagne reception, other presentations were made by Chancellor Robert Birgeneau, University Librarian Tom Leonard, Bob Haas, and Executive Vice Chancellor Emeritus Earl Cheit. Thanks to the generosity of our donors, five million dollars was raised for the naming.
The Library Prize for Undergraduate Research recognizes excellence in undergraduate research projects that show evidence of significant inquiry using the library, its resources, and collections, and learning about the research and information-gathering process itself. Sixty submissions were made this year, up by half from 2005. Two of the six awards were to freshmen, underscoring the impressive quality of Cal's incoming students. One winner was freshman Breeanna Fujio, whose paper on the Salton Sea was written for a class taught by Professor James Casey and Bancroft staff Peter Hanff and David Farrell. Other winning papers were on topics as diverse as carbon monoxide exposures in waterpipe smoking; colonial schools in French Morocco in the 1920s as a lens for French assumptions about Islamic education; and the Kitchen Debate of Nixon and Kruschev in 1959. As committee chair Deborah Sommer commented, the awards illustrate how "Berkeley undergraduates are using library resources with genuine sophistication and subtlety, and are doing truly amazing work!" More details are at http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/researchprize/.
The Bancroft Library at the University of California, Berkeley, announced the February 2006 receipt of a grant from the Rosalinde and Arthur Gilbert Foundation to support cataloguing of the Save the Bay archives. One of the environmental movement's greatest success stories, Save the Bay stands as a testament to the power of grassroots social action. The $113, 873 grant will enable the Bancroft to process the entire Save the Bay collection, including creating a finding aid that will be available to scholars and to the wider public both at the library and online.
The Save the Bay archive tells the story of the birth and growth of this movement from 1961 through the present. The materials document many of their major successes, including the creation of a permanent government commission that has prevented most additional Bay fill; halting a San Francisco runway expansion; and helping to establish the San Francisco Bay National Wildlife Refuge. The archives, contained in 45 cartons of documents and photos, tell Save the Bay's story in greater detail and richness than possible by any other means. They join the Bancroft's other rich holdings in environmental collections, which are among Bancroft's most heavily-used.
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