2010
Current Exhibit: Recent Acquisitions in Special Collections: 2010
September 9 - October 31, 2010
This exhibit in Special Collections displays highlights from book and manuscript collections acquired during the past year, including:
Joel Conway / Early California Aviation Photograph Collection,
Judith A. Hoffberg Collection,
Books from the Alfred and Carol Schmitz Collection,
Stanley Sheinbaum Collection,
and other recent acquisitions in the CEMA, Oral History, Performing Arts, University Archives, and Wyles collections.
For more information, see our Current Exhibits page.
Current Exhibit: Edouard Pecourt Collection: An Exhibit of Early French Cylinder and Disc Recordings
July 1-August 31, 2010
Edouard Pecourt was a Parisian record dealer and collector who owned La Boîte à Disques in Paris from the early 1950s until he emigrated, along with his collection, to the United States in 1986. Pecourt’s extraordinary collection of over 3,000 cylinders and 18,000 discs was acquired by the UCSB Library in 2010. The library’s collection of cylinder recordings now numbers over 12,000 titles, and outside of the Bibliothèque nationale de France, it contains the largest collection of French cylinders in a public institution. Selections from the collection are on exhibit in the Department of Special Collections.
Hector Gonzalez - Visiting Artist: “The History of Rampart Records”
UCSB Multicultural Center Theater - Film Screening and discussion on May 27, 6 p.m.
2nd Floor GSA Lounge - Dance Party on May 27, 7 p.m.
Photo Exhibit - Graduate Student Lounge
La Cuesta Continuation High School Presentation - School Board Room, 720 Santa Barbara Street, May 24, 9 a.m.
Hector Gonzalez is a record producer, musician, award winning sound engineer and current owner of Rampart Records. He has a first hand view of the vibrant music scene in East Los Angeles where multicultural bands contributed to the development of rock and roll. Gonzalez has many great stories regarding the players in what is called the West Coast East Side Sound. He is firmly grounded in the traditions of that time with a uniquely Southern Californian view of the early rock and roll scene that exploded around the country.
Gonzalez is a visiting artist in residence at UCSB sponsored by the Chicano Studies Institute and the California Ethnic and Multicultural Archives in the UCSB Library. He has taught classes in Chicano film studies, broadcast technology and ethnic studies.
Co-sponsored by : UCSB Chicano Studies Institute’s Research Working Group on Chican@ Visual Arts and the California Ethnic and Multicultural Archives, Special Collections, UCSB Library for more information contact CEMA - (805) 893-8563 cema [at] library [dot] ucsb [dot] edu.
Public Lives of Posters in San Francisco’s Chinatown, Manilatown, and Japantown, 1970s and 1980s: The Kearny Street Workshop Archives Poster Collection.
Tuesday, May 4 - Friday, June 11 - Art Exhibit/MCC Meeting Rooms
Tuesday, May 4, 5 pm - Opening Reception
This exhibition is a special compendium which encapsulates visual cultures, global ethnopoles, and urban public spaces of that time. On street poles, storefront windows, and community centers - historic Asian Pacific American graphic art posters publicly announced and affirmed counter-narratives. Curated by Julianne P. Gavino, Ph.D. Candidate, Department of History of Art and Architecture.
Co-Sponsored by Asian American Studies, the California Ethnic and Multicultural Archives - UCSB Library, Instructional Development, and the Interdisciplinary Humanities Center.
Current Exhibit: Maps and Atlases in Special Collections
March 8 - May 28, 2010
Featuring a selection of maps, atlases (and related materials) from Special Collections holdings from across a wide geographic and chronological range showing areas of the ancient, old and new worlds as well as other cartographic/geographic entities.
Represented works are from the Wyles, Printers and Bernath Collections with antique maps from the John and Peggy Maximus Collection and other sources featuring the work of noted cartographers such as Mercator, Blaeu, Tirion and Zatta among others.
Necessary Theater: Luis Valdez and the Teatro Campesino
January 12, 2010
The California Ethnic and Multicultural Archives (CEMA) will be co-sponsoring a day-long Chicano Theater Conference and Diversity Lecture Series, featuring a keynote address by Luis Valdez, panel discussion with Diane Rodriguez, Jorge Huerta and graduate students, and a performance by the Chicano Secret Service. For more information, please see CEMA's Exhibits and Events.
Video from the event can be viewed here.
Current Exhibit: ¡Movimiento! Exhibit on the Chicano Movement
December 7, 2009 - February 20, 2010
This winter’s exhibit centers on the movement for social justice and equity that was actually another stage in the continuum of the Mexican American Civil Rights Movement that began in the 1940s. The displays are organized thematically and draw from a variety of sources from collections in the California Ethnic and Multicultural Archives (CEMA). For more information, see CEMA’s Exhibits and Events.
2009
Esteban Villa: El Movimiento Chicano and the Royal Chicano Air Force
The California Ethnic and Multicultural Archives (CEMA) will be co-sponsoring two presentations by Esteban Villa on the Chicano movement and the Royal Chicano Air Force artist collective. There will be an on-campus lecture on November 17, 2009 at 7:00 pm in Broida Hall (Physics Dept.), followed by a presentation at La Cuesta Continuation High School on November 23, 2009 at 9:00 am. For more information, please see CEMA’s Exhibits and Events.
Victor Project News: Second NEH Grant Awarded to Support Further Development of Online Encyclopedia
A second National Endowment for the Humanities grant has been awarded to the UCSB Library. This new grant will support the further development of the online encyclopedia of Victor Talking Machine Company recordings. Please visit the Encyclopedic Discography of Victor Recordings online.
El Teatro Campesino: Videos Now Available Online
A Grant from UC MEXUS to the UCSB Library as part of the ImaginArte multidisciplinary initiative has helped to fund the conversion of 118 video tapes into 5 different formats. These videos are part of the El Teatro Campesino Archives [CEMA 5], at the University of California, Santa Barbara Library. They are an important record of El Teatro Campesino (ETC) and the Chicano and farm workers movement. Some of these videos can now be seen on the ImaginArte Website.
Current Exhibit: The U.S. and the World after 1945
May 15 - August 15, 2009
Our current exhibit materials that reflect the political and cultural state of the world after the end of World War II. Topics include:
the Beginning of the Atomic Age,
Post-War Japan and Post-War Germany,
the Cold War: Duck and Cover,
the Atomic Age: Popular Culture,
Books from the Stuart L. Bernath Memorial Collection,
the McCarthy Era and Anti-Communism Crusades,
American Interests Abroad,
and the Post-Colonial World.
Department of Special Collections Acquires Lou Cannon Papers
UCSB Library’s Department of Special Collections has recently acquired the papers of author Lou Cannon, former White House correspondent and noted biographer of Ronald Reagan. He has also authored an extensive social history of the Rodney King beatings and the resultant 1992 Los Angeles riots.
"The Ronald Reagan and the Rodney King archives that are now housed in Special Collections at UC Santa Barbara represent my life's work, and I'm pleased they've found such a good home," said Cannon.
Cannon’s works include Ronnie and Jesse: A Political Odyssey (1969); Reagan (1982); President Reagan: The Role of a Lifetime (1991); Governor Reagan: His Rise to Power (2003); and Official Negligence: How Rodney King and the Riots Changed Los Angeles and the LAPD (1997).
"On behalf of UC Santa Barbara, I would like to express my deep gratitude to Lou and Mary Cannon for choosing our campus to receive their extraordinary gift of the Lou Cannon – Rodney King, Los Angeles Riots archive," said UCSB Chancellor Henry T. Yang. "We are also immensely grateful to UCSB Foundation Trustee Sara Miller McCune, Patricia Van Every, and the Donald T. Leahy Trust for their generous support to help us acquire Lou's Ronald Reagan archive. Together these papers represent an important and valuable legacy. We appreciate the devotion of both Lou and Mary for making these papers available for study by future generations of scholars, and we are honored to be chosen as the home for this historic body of work."
For additional information about the collections, please see the press release or contact the Department of Special Collections at (805) 893-3062 or special [at] library [dot] ucsb [dot] edu.
2008
Darrell Baker and Tina Arth Donation
September 2008
Collector and author Darrel Baker and his wife Tina Arth gave the library a generous donation to acquire new cylinders for the library's Cylinder Preservation and Digitization Project. The money will be used to purchase recordings that the library would otherwise not be able to acquire. Mr. Baker has had a long interest in early sound recordings, significantly recordings by Scottish entertainer Harry Lauder. With Larry F. Kiner he is the author of The Sir Harry Lauder discography (Metuchen, N.J.: Scarecrow Press, 1990) and the Encyclopedia of Egyptian Pharaohs: predynastic through twentieth dynasty (3200 B.C.-1085 B.C.) (London: Stacey International, 2008). This is Baker's second major gift to the library. He also donated his collection of Harry Lauder cylinders and discs to the UCSB Library in 2006. The Lauder cylinders have since been digitized by the library and can be listened to online at the Cylinder Preservation and Digitization Project.
Neil O'Brien Papers
August 2008
This summer, the library was pleased to receive the papers of early 20th century American blackface entertainer Neil O'Brien, leader of "Neil O'Brien's Great American Minstrels," including scripts, music, set designs, photographs, posters, programs, sheet music, and financial documents.
Collection is currently being inventoried and processed.
Bruce Bastin/Interstate Music Collection
May 2008
This May, UCSB Library acquired a portion of folklorist Bruce Bastin's record collection, consisting of 10,000 78rpm ethnic and folk recordings from Latin America and Europe. The collection also includes recordings in popular traditions, such as Argentine tangos. Bruce Bastin started Interstate Music in the 1970s to reissue important folk, jazz, country, blues, and ethnic recordings on LP. Over the years, he issued some 850 compilations on LP and CD, featuring music from The Americas and the Caribbean, Europe, Asia, and Africa. Currently, the recordings are being cataloged.
2007
Kenneth Karmiole Endowment
Kenneth Karmiole, Class of ’68, is creating an endowed fund to benefit Special Collections in the UC Santa Barbara Library with a pledge of $100,000. Earnings from the endowment will purchase rare books and manuscripts to enhance the university’s research holdings.
Diana and Simon Raab Endowment
Diana and Simon Raab of Santa Barbara are creating a generously-endowed fund to benefit Special Collections. Earnings from the endowment will support the purchase of journals, memoirs, travel items and other rare and important additions to the research collection.
2005
New Digital Collection with 5,000 Cylinder Recordings Online
A new digital collection featuring the library's cylinder recordings from the mid 1890s to the mid 1920s is now online. The site is available at http://cylinders.library.ucsb.edu/. The project is the culmination of a two-year grant funded in part by the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS). The site features downloadable mp3 audio files as well as streaming versions of 5,000 of the library's cylinder recordings. More cylinders are being added as they are cataloged and digitized. The site also has "streaming radio" programs on various topics and a "featured cylinder" section, showcasing some of the most interesting items in the collection.
Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions Audio Archive
Thanks to donors Neal Linson, Ceil Pulitzer, and Stanley Sheinbaum, a project has begun to digitize and make accessible on the web some of the most important conference proceedings, talks, and dialogues recorded by CSDI. Dating back to the early 1960s, the topics covered in these tapes remain as critical today as they were then. Issues include peace and war, democracy, dissent, community action, ecology and the environment, elections and the electoral process, immigration, international relations, law and order, the media, race and ethnicity, and religion.
2004
John S. Kiewit Photography Collection
The UCSB Library Department of Special Collections is pleased to announce that it recently has received the John S. Kiewit Photography Collection (Mss 228) of several thousand slides, prints, negatives and related work, primarily containing images of the West, including Yosemite, ghost towns, and the Central Coast of California. John S. Kiewit (1948-2000) was the author of Gone to Sanctuary: From the Sins of Confusion (Capra Press, 1997). His image of the Channel Islands, featured in the book, was chosen for the UCSB Library 2004 holiday card.
2000
The Isla Vista Resources Project
The Neal J. Linson Family generously provided funding for a project to organize, preserve, and publicize the extensive Isla Vista resources held by the UCSB Department of Special Collections and other areas of the UCSB Library. This project was particularly interested in documenting events and issues concerning the Isla Vista community in the 1960s and 1970s, including student activism, reaction to U.S. involvement in Vietnam, and the 1970 burning of the Bank of America building.
This was a one year project, running from August 1, 2000 to July 31, 2001. In that time an Isla Vista Resources web page was developed as part of the Special Collections website. The page contains more detailed information about our resources and includes select images from the collections. We also have provided links to additional relevant resources at other institutions and sites.
We are very interested in expanding our Isla Vista collections and hope that anybody with potentially relevant materials will consider donating them to the UCSB Library. If you have questions about donations, or the project, please contact:
David Seubert, Head of Special Collections (Acting)
Davidson Library
University of California, Santa Barbara
Santa Barbara, CA 93106-9010
Phone: (805) 893-3420
FAX: (805) 893-5749
Email: seubert [at] library [dot] ucsb [dot] edu (subject: Isla%20Vista%20Archives%20Project)
