Greg Scholl never sought out to become a collector. In fact, as is the case for many accidental collectors, it all started with a curiosity about a subject that turned into a casual hobby and then morphed into a multi-decade long pursuit of collection completion. This formula describes many collectors who donate materials to UCSB Library’s Special Research Collections.
Gitta Alpar’s life story played out like a sweeping biopic: Born Regina Klopfer in 1903 in Budapest, Hungary, Alpar’s coloratura soprano talent was realized at an early age. By the age of 25, she had become one of the most beloved opera stars of her time. Alpar was the lead in classic opera productions in major European cities to adoring crowds of thousands and later starred in films and on stage.
In 2007, Bay Area artists Melanie Cervantes and Jesus Barraza created Dignidad Rebelde, a graphic arts collaboration that uses art to highlight community struggles, amplify stories, and support global indigenous and people of color movements.
In Fall 2022, the archives of the music and comedy duo Smothers Brothers were donated to the UC Santa Barbara Library’s Performing Arts Collection on behalf of the two brothers, Thomas and Richard Smothers.
Over the last 25 years, Buellton residents Kim and Dean Pananides ‘67,’75 have built a complete collection of first editions of the renowned Trianon Press, a Paris-based publisher of fine art books, which they are donating to the UC Santa Barbara Library Department of Special Research Collections. The new collection will be established as The Dean & Kim Pananides Trianon Press Collection.
UCSB Library is pleased to announce that it is the recipient of a Humanities For All Quick Grant award from California Humanities for the Santa Barbara Community Archiving Project.
On January 1, 2022, an estimated 400,000 pre-1923 sound recordings formerly restricted through copyright entered the public domain, thanks to the passing of the Music Modernization Act (MMA).
The UC Santa Barbara Library had already digitally preserved over 60,000 of these recordings from its Performing Arts Collection, and now those recordings are freely accessible to anyone, for any purpose, in high-resolution formats.
The Grammy Museum Foundation issued a $10,000 grant to the UC Santa Barbara Library to preserve, digitize, and make accessible a portion of the groundbreaking radio broadcasts of the CBS Symphony conducted by Bernard Herrmann in the 1930s and 1940s.
UCSB Library is pleased to announce that some of our digitized special collections are now available on the JSTOR platform as part of JSTOR’s Open Community Collections initiative. Over 22,000 items from UCSB Library can be freely browsed and searched at https://www.jstor.org/site/ucsb. These collections include maps, photographs, newspapers, scores, and more. Some key collections are the Joel Conway Flying A Studio Photographs, the Ronald H.
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