News

UCLA Digital Library Publishes Hidden Content of Explorer David Livingstone's Field Writings

In Africa in 1871, the Victorian explorer David Livingstone met Henry M. Stanley of the New York Herald and gave him a harrowing account of a massacre by slave traders of four hundred people. Stanley's press reports prompted the British government to close the East African slave trade, secured Livingstone's place in history, and launched Stanley's own career as an imperialist in Africa.

An international team of scholars and scientists led by Adrian Wisnicki of Indiana University of Pennsylvania has just completed an eighteen-month project to recover Livingstone's original account of the massacre, found in a diary that was illegible until it was restored with advanced digital imaging.

Livingstone's 1871 Field Diary is a free online public resource published by the UCLA Digital Library Program. Digital images of other Livingstone writings are also available through the Digital Library project.

UCLA Library Acquires LAUSD Historical Archive

The UCLA Library has entered into an agreement to acquire the historical records of the Los Angeles Unified School District, one of the most important public education enterprises in the nation. Covering more than one hundred years of Southern California public education and civic life, this extensive archive documents major aspects of district operations dating back to the late nineteenth century.

Among its most significant contents are demographic surveys conducted in the 1920s to segregate school populations based on race, materials recording the school board's response to the landmark Crawford desegregation lawsuit filed in 1963, and decades of files documenting the district's administration of busing and desegregation programs.

Also important are district-wide publications distributed by Susan Miller Dorsey, the first woman superintendent; material documenting Faye Allen, the first African American elected to the board; and records of Japanese American students interned during World War II. In addition, photos document the reconstruction of schools and neighborhoods following the 1933 Long Beach earthquake, and architectural plans record some one hundred years of school construction.

The collection includes official records of the Los Angeles Board of Education, consisting of board and committee reports and minutes, financial records, and school directories. These are supported by research files containing documentation such as letters, reports, catalogs, and lists for board actions. Subjects range from curriculum, desegregation, enrollment, staff, and health and safety to buildings and facilities, athletics, "un-American activities," and challenged library books.

UCLA Library Special Collections Acquires Ethiopic manuscripts collection

The UCLA Library has acquired the largest private collection of Ethiopic manuscripts and scrolls in the U.S., given by Gerald and Barbara Weiner. Together with the Library's existing collections, this gift makes the UCLA Library the leading repository for Ethiopic manuscripts in North America.

Dating from the eighteenth to the twenty-first centuries, the collection of 137 bound manuscripts and 102 scrolls is particularly rich in elaborately illustrated liturgical texts. Highlights include a late nineteenth/early twentieth-century version of the Gospels containing seventy-eight miniatures; a nineteenth-century "lives of the saints" with forty miniatures; a twentieth-century compilation of a table blessing and miracles performed by Jesus with thirty-seven miniatures; and a twentieth-century collection of prayers with an image of John the Evangelist and twenty-six miniatures.

UC-wide Catalog Next-Generation Melvyl Replaces Current Melvyl June 24

On June 24, the current UC-wide catalog Melvyl will be retired as the UC Libraries replace it with the Next-Generation Melvyl search tool. Next-Generation Melvyl was released as a pilot in April 2008 and has proven to be popular with UC students, faculty, and staff as well as the general public. After the older Melvyl catalog is discontinued, Next-Generation Melvyl will be referred to as Melvyl.

Next-Generation Melvyl supports research by allowing one-stop searching of Melvyl's thirty-three million records, together with some eight hundred million items from research institutions globally, as well as selected full-text article databases, ebooks, digital content, archival information, and much more. Easy-to-use links to ebooks and the Request service enable users to retrieve electronic titles immediately and order items held elsewhere via interlibrary loan.

If you have any questions about how to use Next-Generation Melvyl, please contact the UCLA Library subject specialist who supports your discipline.

UCLA Library Special Collections Acquires Bourbon Family Archive

The UCLA Library has acquired the Bourbon del Monte di San Faustino Family Archive, a comprehensive collection of fourteenth- to nineteenth-century documents created by, for, and about this prominent Italian family. Among its contents are civil and ecclesiastical contracts, documents from lawsuits and court cases, wills and post-mortem inventories, genealogies, certificates of nobility, correspondence, and family chronicles.

The family can trace its origin and lineage back to the time of Charlemagne, who granted its original patent of nobility. The territory over which its members ruled for centuries spanned parts of Tuscany and Umbria.

The archive contains more than twenty-one thousand manuscript leaves, more than two thousand printed pages, and thirty large illuminated parchment documents. Its unbroken provenance can be traced back to the sixteenth century. It is a gift from Montino Bourbon, sixth Principe di San Faustino, Marchese di Monte Santa Maria, and his wife, Rita; Montino was born in Rome and currently lives in Santa Barbara, California.

UCLA Library Celebrates Earth Day with Environmentalism Oral History Series

In conjunction with Earth Day, April 22, the UCLA Library Center for Oral History Research has launched "Environmental Activism in Los Angeles," which features in-depth oral histories with local environ- mentalists. Twenty-five interviews have been conducted, about half of which are now available online as both written transcripts and digital recordings.

Among the interview subjects are Lois Arkin, founder of the Los Angeles Eco-Village; Dorothy Green, founder of Heal the Bay; Tree People founder Andy Lipkis; and Lewis MacAdams, co-founder of Friends of the Los Angeles River.

Additional interviews will be released when their editing and digitization is completed.

Tom Hyry Appointed as Head of Library Special Collections

The UCLA Library has appointed Tom Hyry director of special collections. His first day will be March 29, 2010.

The position is a new one at the UCLA Library. The library's five separate special collections — the Louise M. Darling Biomedical Library History and Special Collections for the Sciences, Center for Oral History Research, Performing Arts Special Collections, Charles E. Young Research Library Department of Special Collections, and University Archives — are being integrated into a single special collections department.

Hyry comes to UCLA from Yale University, where since 2006 he has been head of the manuscript unit in the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library. In that position, he has streamlined processing and accessioning practices to greatly increase the volume of collections available to researchers; enhanced methods for acquiring, processing, and preserving born-digital materials; developed an off-site processing facility; and hired and trained eight new staff members to process archival collections.

Hyry earned a master's degree in information and library studies from the University of Michigan and a bachelor's degree in history from Carleton College.

More information about Hyry's professional background and the scope of this new position is available via the UCLA Newsroom.

UCLA Library and Mazer Archives Launch Partnership

The UCLA Library and the June L. Mazer Lesbian Archives have launched an outreach and collection-building partnership, which will expand access to collections held by the Mazer Archives and expand the Library's holdings in this important area of social and cultural history. The Mazer Archives is the largest major archive on the West Coast dedicated to preserving and promoting lesbian and feminist history and culture.

The partnership draws on the strengths of each organization: the Mazer Archives to identify collections, solicit donors, and provide expertise; and the Library to process collections, preserve their contents, and make them broadly accessible. The project has begun with the creation of finding aids for and digitization of the collections of Connexus Women’s Center/Centro de Mujeres, Southern California Women for Understanding, and Women Against Violence Against Women and the papers of Margaret Cruikshank and Lillian Faderman, all of which are accessible via the Digital Library portal.

New Project Will Highlight L.A.'s Cultures, Communities, Histories

The UCLA Library has announced an innovative project to gather, preserve, interpret, and make accessible its collections documenting the remarkable multiplicity of cultures and at-risk hidden histories of the Los Angeles region.

"Collecting Los Angeles," the first project to be made possible by a recent $5 million gift from the Arcadia Fund (see below) intended to support transformational changes in the UCLA Library's collections and the services that support them, will build on the Library's existing strengths in this area, which encompass special collections, photo archives, oral histories, maps, and circulating materials on local history, government, politics, and literary, performing, and visual arts.

The new initiative's curator will be Susan Anderson, an accomplished historian, author, editor, and project manager who has consulted for the California State Parks Foundation and the California Endowment and curated a statewide touring exhibition on the African American community of Allensworth, California. Most recently, she served as managing director of the "LA as Subject" program at the USC Libraries. Anderson, who has taught at Pitzer College, received her bachelor's degree from Scripps College and her MBA from the UCLA Anderson School of Management.

UCLA Library Acquires Fante Papers

The UCLA Library has acquired the literary papers of the Los Angeles novelist, short-story writer, and screenwriter John Fante (1909–83). The collection contains his manuscripts for books, short stories and screenplays; personal letters; business records, including book contracts; and memorabilia.

The literary materials in the collection encompass all the manuscripts that are known to exist for Fante's novels, short stories, and screenplays, many of them featuring Fante's annotations, as well as proofs for his books and copies of the magazines in which his stories appeared. Among the items of memorabilia are Fante's typewriter and pencil, his Screen Writers Guild (later Writers Guild) membership certificates, numerous photographs, and a lock of his hair.

The materials will be housed in the Charles E. Young Research Library Department of Special Collections, where they complement holdings of papers and books by other authors associated with California and Los Angeles, including Raymond Chandler, Nathanael West, Horace McCoy, and Fante's close friend Carey McWilliams.

UCLA Library Acquires Huxley Archive

The UCLA Library has acquired the literary archive of the visionary novelist and essayist Aldous Huxley (1894–1963). The collection contains literary materials he created subsequent to a devastating 1961 fire that destroyed his Los Angeles home and much of his earlier archive; correspondence, photographs, and audio tapes; and typescripts and galley proofs retrieved from publishers after his death. Also included are the papers of his wife, Laura Huxley (1911–2007), an author and lay therapist.

The literary materials include manuscripts and working papers for twelve books, including his final novel, Island; thirty-five essays, articles, and speeches; and thirty-one lectures. Among hundreds of letters are love letters between the writer and his wife. There are recordings of many of his lectures and of him reading from his novel Time Must Have a Stop (1944) and English and French poetry. The archive also contains a travel diary, four personal notebooks, and personal effects, including his British passport, a magnifying glass, fountain pens, and a leather wallet.

The archive was acquired with funds provided by Bill Edwards, a 1961 graduate of UCLA and a member of the UCLA Library's board of visitors and the Powell Society. It joins the Aldous Huxley Papers already held by the Charles E. Young Research Library Department of Special Collections.

UCLA Library Receives its Largest Gift Ever for Collections

The UCLA Library has received the largest single gift for collections in its history: $5 million from the Arcadia Fund. Gift funds will be used to support efforts to further develop and preserve collections and make them accessible.

Among the possibilities under discussion are projects that build new collections, enhance existing ones, repurpose already digitized materials, expand digitization efforts into new areas of concentration, and explore and develop new types of recorded knowledge. Funds may also be used to enhance end-user discovery of UCLA Library holdings, encourage the use of materials in novel ways, leverage new technology to attract broader audiences to use them in instruction and scholarship, and manage and make accessible scholarship in new formats.

The Arcadia Fund's key mission is the preservation of cultural knowledge and materials and environmental conservation. This includes near-extinct languages, rare historical archives and museum-quality artifacts, and the protection of ecosystems and environments threatened with extinction. Arcadia has made several major donations to the UCLA Library to support the Center for Primary Research and Training in the Charles E. Young Research Library Department of Special Collections, the most recent being a significant gift in 2008 to the endowment supporting the program.