On Tuesday, incoming freshman gathered outside Doe Library as they began the official start of their college career, an eight-day orientation to Berkeley and its tremendous resources. Today, as I look outside my office window, students enjoy lunch from multi-ethnic food trucks beside the Campanile. The campus is bursting with new energy and enthusiasm, and the Library is excited to be at the heart of it.
This semester, we are launching Level Up, a new program designed to empower all students to acquire 21st-century information skills. Level Up will offer a menu of skill-building workshops and online resources on topics such as fake news, social media for social good, and advanced data analysis.
We’ve launched a new initiative to help address the high and ever-increasing cost of education to students and their families, as state support continues to decline. We are leading a campus-wide collaboration on two pilot programs to improve course content affordability. We expect students to save hundreds of thousands of dollars in just the first year of this new program.
Our halls are filled with materials from our unique and diverse collections, including a gallery devoted to recent acquisitions by The Bancroft Library, and exhibits on the world-famous Summer of Love, the history of Syrian culture, and the team of female mathematicians featured in Hidden Figures.
It’s an incredible time to be at Berkeley and the Library, where we are passionate about our mission to “help current and future users find, evaluate, use, and create knowledge to better the world.” From incoming students to esteemed scholars, the Library welcomes you.
— Jeffrey MacKie-Mason, University Librarian