Collections

Plans are underway to bring the Music Collection to the main UCSB Library. Currently housed on the second floor of the former Arts Library, the Music Collection supports academic and performance programs in Music at the undergraduate and graduate levels, encompassing both Western and non-Western music.

Use Google to search for “D.A.R.E.” (Drug Abuse Resistance Education), and the top 10 results include the organization’s official website, but also the video for the Gorrilaz song “DARE.”

Use Web of Science, an online subscription database available to UCSB students via the UCSB Library’s website, and you get a list of scholarly articles and studies about the drug-prevention program.

The collection of Lynn Andersen of Bisbee, Arizona, found a new home at the UC Santa Barbara Library last summer. Andersen was a collector of early phonograph recordings and was particularly interested in two-minute wax cylinders, Pathe discs, and foreign recordings. His collection was not huge in size, but had many significant recordings and was expertly curated. In the collection are about 1,200 two-minute cylinders and a similar number of disc recordings. Andersen passed away in November 2015.

In a contentious political environment, it’s comforting to know that some people prefer to argue about Bach.

Cellists from Pablo Casals to Yo-Yo Ma have interpreted and played Johann Sebastian Bach’s six Cello Suites in very different ways, with music scholars analyzing and debating every nuance.

When UCSB student Joanna Hui, a cellist and Bach fan, earned a $750 grant to study Bach’s Cello Suites, she turned to the UCSB Library and its extensive collection of music recordings to actually hear performances of the Suites by famed cellists.

UCSB Professor Emeritus D. Barton Johnson’s academic biography describes him as “a leading figure of Nabokov studies for many years.”

Zoran Kuzmanovich, president of the International Vladimir Nabokov Society, begs to differ.

Johnson “was not a leading figure. He was and still is absolutely the central figure of Nabokov studies over the last four decades,” Kuzmanovich said during a Nabokov symposium at UCSB last year. The event was held in honor of Johnson, a retired Department of Germanic and Slavic Studies professor.

Virginia L.T. Gardner is a pansy person, even though her initial encounter with the flower wasn’t successful.

The Santa Barbara resident, who grew up in Pennsylvania, came to love gardening and all things botanical as a small child because her grandmother had an enchanting 18-acre home that included a hillside rock garden, a woodland, apple orchards, a vegetable garden and more.

“My grandmother once let me plant a totally improper plant at the base of a tree: a pansy, because I loved pansies so much and wanted to, even though it wouldn’t grow there,” Gardner said.

To find Michael and Nan Miller’s home in the Los Angeles area, just look in the driveway for a car with the license plate “OPERETT.”

To say that the Millers are operetta aficionados doesn’t do them justice. The couple’s home was custom-built to hold their massive collection of 60,000 recordings, 10,000 pieces of sheet music, 9,000 books, 5,000 vocal scores, and numerous posters, programs, postcards, radio broadcasts, and more devoted to operetta and early musical theater.

UCSB Library has selected a new, more modern online search tool to replace our 16-year old Library Catalog. The current Library Catalog is the entry point for locating books, journals, DVDs, and other materials held by UCSB Library. However, additional search tools are required for searching electronic journal articles and materials at other libraries.

Fifty years ago, the UCSB Library created a separate unit to collect maps and aerial photographs. In 1979, the Map Room was renamed the Map & Imagery Laboratory (MIL) in order to acknowledge its role in supporting research and teaching on campus.  In the time since, MIL has evolved into one of the largest unique collections of cartographic materials in the nation. In particular, our collection of historic aerial photographs presents an unparalleled view of landscape change in California and beyond.

The Music Academy of the West and the UCSB Library have renewed a partnership to preserve and digitize the Academy’s archive of open reel tapes and transfer the organization’s paper archives to the UCSB Library, where they will be available for research, teaching, and personal enjoyment. Located in nearby Montecito, the Music Academy of the West has been developing “the next generation of great classically trained musicians” through its summer conservatory program and festival since 1947.