Day: December 1, 2006

1998 marked the 25th anniversary of the development of recombinant DNA by Stanley N. Cohen of Stanford University and Herbert W. Boyer of the University of California, San Francisco. This invention made it possible to recombine and clone DNA, thus providing basic scientists with a simple and precise method for studying the structure and function of genes of higher and lower organisms. Recombinant DNA technology, as it came to be known, also became a foundation of the biotechnology industry now flourishing in the Bay Area and around the world.

The Bioscience and Biotechnology in History exhibit celebrates this discovery and suggests its broad implications for science, society, and industry. It also provides a glimpse of bioscience research and discovery at Berkeley preceding the recombinant DNA revolution, as documented in the archives and oral histories of four prominent scientists: Karl Meyer, Melvin Calvin, Wendell Stanley, and Gunther Stent.

The Bancroft Library also presents Images of Native Americans, a digital companion to an exhibit of rare books, photographs, illustrations, and other archival and manuscript materials that debuted in the Fall of 2000, to celebrate the acquisition of the University of California, Berkeley Library's nine millionth volume.

At the turn of the twentieth century, academic programs in anthropology in America were flourishing in Cambridge, Chicago, New York and Philadelphia. There was intense interest in the extraordinary anthropological riches of California but no academic program dedicated to discovering, interpreting, and curating them.

The Foundations of Anthropology at the University of California, 1901-1960, based on an exhibit in the Bancroft Library Gallery, January 21 – April 29, 2002, tells the story of the key individuals and events driving the establishment of an academic program in 1901 that within a few decades achieved worldwide stature. The exhibit draws on the extensive collection of records, documents, and images held by The Bancroft Library including departmental records and faculty papers. A few items have been lent by other institutions, most notably — a special feature of the online exhibit — several audio and video clips provided by the Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology.

The online exhibit was created by David Farrell and Andrew Hon, with special technical assistance provided by Gary Handman in the Library’s Media Resources Center, Erica Nordmeier in Bancroft’s Photographic Duplication division, and Sally Thomas in the University of California History Digital Archive.

Foundations of Anthropology at the University of California Digital Exhibit:
http://bancroft.berkeley.edu/Exhibits/anthro/

On December 20, 2005, the UC Berkeley Library inaugurated its digital exhibit of materials from its Fruchtbringende Gesellschaft Collection at http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/news_events/exhibits/fbg/contents.html. This collection contains over 1,600 books, manuscripts and pictorial items, mostly from the 17th century, which document the activities of Germany's first literary society, and is housed in The Bancroft Library.

In August 1617 a small group of Saxon nobles gathered in Castle Hornstein near Weimar to establish a type of institution previously unknown on German soil, the literary society. It was based on the Italian model of the previous century, and specifically on the Accademia della Crusca of Florence, to whose ranks one its founding members, Prince Ludwig of Anhalt-Köthen, had been elected in 1600. Ludwig was the chief benefactor and the head of this new German society until his death in 1650, and he and its other founding members sought inspiration in their pursuit of learning from the many Italian literary societies which had contributed so much to the purification and normalization of Italian letters in the sixteenth century.

The new German society was called the Fruchtbringende Gesellschaft, the Fruitbearing Society, and its motto was "Alles zum Nützen" — "Everything for a purpose." As had its Italian precursors, the German society saw its principal role in the elaboration of language standards for the vernacular, including spelling and grammatical norms but also tending against the use of foreign words and phrases. It also promoted the use of German as a literary and scholarly language by the attention it focussed on important new works of German scholarship and literature, and by its active role in publishing these works through most of the 17th century.

The Fruchtbringende Gesellschaft Collection Digital Exhibit was created by James H. Spohrer, UC Berkeley's Librarian for the Germanic Collections, with technical assistance from Brooke Dykman of the Library's Digital Projects Office. It was made possible by generous financial support from IDC Publishers and by Berkeley's Institute of European Studies.

Fruchtbringende Gesellschaft Collection Digital Exhibit:
http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/news_events/exhibits/fbg/contents.html