Library Employees

​Meet Stewart Engart

Since the UCSB Library launched a project in 2002 to record and digitize its Cylinder Audio Archive, the archive has grown to become the largest online collection of downloadable historic sound recordings. 

Heather Silva recently joined the UCSB Library in the role of Senior Director of Development. No stranger to UCSB, she previously worked with Arts & Lectures for 15 years before she joined the Library team.

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.

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.

This is the second installment of UCSB Library’s new “Student Assistant Spotlight Series,” posts written by our student employees that highlight the types of projects they work on. Noelle Graham is a 4th year student studying Communication. She is currently working on a senior thesis that examines drug and alcohol addiction through the intersection of evolutionary biology and communication. When she graduates, she plans to take a gap year to teach English abroad and then go to law school.

UCSB Library is pleased to introduce a new “Student Assistant Spotlight Series,” posts written by our student employees that highlight the types of projects they work on. Our inaugural post is written by Wyatt Young, a fourth-year undergraduate majoring in History with a minor in the History of Art & Architecture. Wyatt has been working in Special Research Collections as a Processing Assistant for the past year. His areas of interest are public history, museum studies, twentieth-century U.S. culture, and the historiography of collections.

The Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) has awarded UCSB Library a $100,000 National Leadership Grant for "Always Already Computational: Library Collections as Data." The funds will be used for a series of meetings to develop strategies around library collections that support computationally-driven research and teaching. Of 85 submitted projects, only 15 were selected nationally for funding.