UC Berkeley Library

Librarians Navigating Change at Berkeley—since 1869!

Posted on July 22, 2026 by UC Berkeley Library

One truly exciting part of being a librarian at the UC Berkeley Library is the opportunity to do our own research. I came to Berkeley from a background as a public health epidemiologist (very quantitative!) but was supported as I learned qualitative methods and was part of research projects that involved interviewing and analyzing qualitative data. However, the most exciting project I’ve been part of at Berkeley is the one in which I was able to learn from the amazing UC Berkeley Library’s Oral History Center about how to be an oral historian, and I interviewed 15 long-term Berkeley librarians (one with more than 40 years of service!) about how they navigated change over their time here. The project is called Librarians Navigating Change, and the transcripts are live! For more about the project, this wonderful article has the details.

An unexpected and totally fascinating aspect of this project was learning more about the history of the libraries at Berkeley. I learned quite a bit, of course, from the project’s narrators, but I also got to dig into documents and sites with information about the earlier buildings, collections, and people of the libraries. Consider, for example, Joseph Rowell, who was UC Berkeley’s first full-time librarian, a position he held for almost 45 years (he’s in the California Library Hall of Fame!). Consider also the magnificent Bacon Hall (originally called the Becon Art and Library Building), built in 1881 during Rowell’s tenure, the first campus building specifically allocated for use as a library. There was a UC Berkeley library as early as the date that classes began in 1869, but it was small, and it perched in various buildings before finding a more permanent home 12 years later. To me, Bacon Hall seems quite monumental in scale and design, even if not as elegant as Doe Library, which was completed in 1911.

Source: “Bacon Library, 1901”, retrieved from Calisphere

So, imagine my delight when project narrator and long-time Berkeley librarian Corliss Lee mentioned that she still had the notebook of handouts she had collated in 1991, her first year as a librarian at Berkeley, working in the Moffitt Undergraduate Library. While I’m older myself, I didn’t graduate from library school until 2008, so this 35-year-old notebook was a treasure trove, a time capsule, and whatever other collection of historical coolness you want to call it. I was able to scan 172 pages of it for inclusion on the “Librarians Navigating Change” project site, and at least for geeks of the history of libraries and the history of information technologies, they make fascinating reading! Here are a few highlights…

1) Library Facts, 1989: Interestingly, there were already 2 million volumes stored off site, even then! And, I may have to try to hunt down pictures of the Entomology Library.

2) Computerized Information:

For those of us who are a certain age, CD-ROMs and floppy disks were once a fact of life—but this handout makes us realize how very revolutionary they were compared to looking at multiple volumes of books, and hand-copying.

3) Finding Article Citations:

Finding articles using keywords has come a LONG way. As librarians, we know that these types of commands may be called on behind the scenes of what the user sees, but even these are dying out as search algorithms become more sophisticated. Today’s user doesn’t need to know any of these for a simple database citation search! (But they may still help you with an advanced search—ask us librarians if you ‘d like to see how, we love this stuff.)

4) DialUp Access

First of all, note that there was MORE THAN ONE CATALOG. As Corliss Lee mentioned in her interview for the project, “At some point we had Telnet GLADIS [and] Telnet MELVYL. I think [the web versions were called] Pathfinder and Web MELVYL… we couldn’t even agree how many catalogs we had! Did we have two catalogs each with two interfaces? Did we have three catalogs because the MELVYL’s [two platforms] were more alike than GLADIS and Pathfinder were? Or do we have four catalogs? And I think that’s a bad sign. Your staff can’t figure out how many catalogs you have. But those were the days, man.”

Secondly, even I can’t remember what a baud is, and that’s fine with me, but I do remember that to dial into the service, you had to use a long cord to connect a phone that looked like the one in the picture on the upper left, to a specialized outlet, or jack, in your wall. Like ethernet is now, but WAY WAY WAY slower.

5) GLADIS Journal Search Result

The thing that strikes me about this diagram is how similar it is to the record you might look at today! All of the essential categories and organizational guiding numbers and characters are still how we make sure our items are findable! If you go to lib.berkeley.edu and do a journal search (by using the drop down menu to the right of the search box), you’ll find this record, and scrolling through, you’ll see it has similar information, similarly arranged! The difference is that now we have online access, we aren’t tracking the locations of print volumes of the journal anymore. Which is OK overall.

6) Moffitt Library Newsletter (back in the day!)

While we aren’t disseminating news in paper format anymore (for the most part), the message of welcome and support for undergraduate students remains the same.

7) Asian American Oral Histories

The UC Berkeley Library’s Oral History Center (formerly known as the Regional Oral History Office ) has collected a large and robust range of oral histories, many of which are now available online. The important part here, in my opinion, is to note that oral histories can serve as “a starting point for research on a variety of subjects.” And now that they are available online and therefore are searchable, it’s much easier to explore!

8) Campus Map

I love looking at old maps, and this one is no exception. There are so many buildings that have gone up since the early ‘90s! Most notable to me is the C.V. Starr East Asian Library, the one you can now see from Memorial Glade, with the façade that I think looks like stained glass. Also, note that at this time, the Main Stacks which run underneath Memorial Glade, hadn’t even been built yet (the rectangles labeled T-4 through T-9 were temporary buildings built during World War II). And you could take buses from campus to Davis, Stanford, Santa Cruz and SF.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this trip down (institutional) memory lane! Next up for this project—a presentation at the annual Oral History Association Conference in October, in Portland, Oregon, titled “ ‘Adventures You Can’t Even Begin to Imagine’: The Librarians Navigating Change Oral History Project”. Onward!

Writing History: Undergraduate Research Papers Investigate Ancient Papyri

Posted on November 13, 2024 by UC Berkeley Library

(Students examine papyri and ostraca during their class visit. Photo by Lee Anne Titangos.)

Writing History: Undergraduate Research Papers Investigate Ancient Papyri

Leah Packard-Grams, Center for the Tebtunis Papyri

This semester, students enrolled in the writing course “Writing History” (AHMA-R1B) got the chance to work as ancient detectives. As their instructor, I asked them each to write a research paper about one of the various ancient documents held in the Center for the Tebtunis Papyri in The Bancroft Library. After examining their options in a class visit, they each chose a papyrus or ostracon to write about. Students were given modern translations of the papyri and ostraca to read, making the ancient texts accessible.

Students Use Interdisciplinary Approaches

The papyri, ostraca, and artifacts from Tebtunis at UC Berkeley were excavated from the site in 1899-1900, and the material has been an asset for Berkeley’s research and teaching collections for over a century. However, with over 26,000 fragments of papyrus, about two dozen ostraca, and many artifacts in the Hearst Museum, there is still plenty of work to be done! Students noticed new things in these artifacts: senior Chloe Logan, for example, described the painting on the reverse side of an inscribed papyrus for the very first time; it had been ignored by scholars for decades despite several scholarly citations of the text on the other side. P.Tebt.1087 was used as part of mummy cartonnage, a sort of ancient papier-mâché that was painted to decorate the casing of the mummy. Cartonnage was made by gluing together layers of previously-used papyrus and then painting over the gessoed surface. Her paper examines both the painted side of the papyrus as well as the inscribed side. Using an art-historical approach for the painted side and an economic-historical approach to analyze the content of the financial account on the other side, she wrote an interdisciplinary study of the piece that considered both sides of the artifact, and considered this as an example of ancient recycling.

(P.Tebt.1087 was used as part of mummy cartonnage, a sort of ancient papier-mâché that was painted to decorate the casing of the mummy. Photo courtesy of the Center for the Tebtunis Papyri, The Bancroft Library, UC Berkeley. https://digicoll.lib.berkeley.edu/record/231074?ln=en#?xywh=-255%2C-345%2C5081%2C3674 )

(Ian McLendon holds O.Tebt. 4, a receipt of beer. Behind him, Nicolas Iosifidis and Wilder Burke research and photograph papyri.)

Ian McLendon compared receipts and tags for beer on ostraca in the collection (an ostracon is a broken potsherd reused as a writing surface). His paper examined the ways beer was used in ritual dining in Tebtunis, and compared the types of documents that record the beverage’s use, cost, and delivery. He even examined some ancient coins to see what it would have been like to pay for beer using drachmai and obols, the ancient currency in use in Ptolemaic Egypt.

Mastering Demons

(P.Tebt.frag. 13385 is an illustrated papyrus depicting three deities. Tutu is depicted as a lion with a crowned, human head and having snakes and knives at his paws– powerful symbols meant to keep demons at bay. Photo courtesy of the Center for the Tebtunis Papyri, The Bancroft Library, UC Berkeley. https://digicoll.lib.berkeley.edu/record/231444?ln=en#?xywh=-419%2C-117%2C3234%2C2338 )

Nicolas Iosifidis was also inspired by an illustration on a papyrus. Tutu, the “master of demons,” was an apotropaic, protective deity in ancient Egypt who defended against forces of chaos who would do harm to humans. In the papyrus, he is depicted as having a human head, a leonine body, and has snakes and knives in his paws– perhaps even in place of his fingers! His headdress and double-plumed crown also contribute to the awe-inspiring effect of this formidable deity. Iosifidis sees Tutu as an opportunity to examine our deeper selves and master our own demons, asking the question, “Is there something else we can acquire from it [the papyrus] as did people back then?” His paper offers an analysis of the exact role of the master of demons, writing that “Tutu doesn’t protect by killing [demons], but rather controlling or taming them.” The god Tutu, for Iosifidis, represents the timeless struggle between “the good and the bad” that exists within us all.

Reading Between the Lines

Reading their papers, I was struck in particular by the students’ enthusiastic comments on the significance of these papyri to broader human history. Alex Moyer chose a papyrus that dealt with the investigation into a murder that occurred in 114 BCE, observing that despite the unfortunate universality of homicide throughout human history, “What distinguishes each society from any other is their approach to investigating and handling murders.” His papyrus, P.Tebt. 1.14, is a letter from a village scribe that offers insight into the process of confiscating the property of an accused person until he can be tried and sentenced. Instead of apprehending him, the village scribe was instructed to “arrange for [his property] to be placed on bond” (lines 9-10). Moyer writes about the value of this papyrus as comparative evidence: “Due to the fair condition and legibility of the papyrus, it is able to act as a figurative time capsule, allowing us to compare and contrast with other societies, including our own, and view how human civilization’s attitude and handling of murders have changed over time.”

(P.Tebt. 1.14, photo courtesy of the Center for the Tebtunis Papyri, The Bancroft Library, UC Berkeley. https://digicoll.lib.berkeley.edu/record/231712?ln=en#?xywh=-2051%2C-257%2C7104%2C5137 )

Victor Flores decided to write about the same papyrus, and was surprised at how this papyrus challenges our perception of the job of an “ancient scribe.” He writes, “These village scribes are not your ordinary scribes, but rather carry a distinct number of tasks like arranging for the bond in order for somebody to confiscate valuables along with carrying out a wide variety of administrative tasks for the government beyond simply writing.” The “village scribe” wasn’t simply a copyist or secretary as one might suppose, and this papyrus is good evidence that allows us to ascertain the roles of scribes!

Student Perspectives

Working with the papyri in The Bancroft Library, I have found that there is a feeling, almost indescribable, when you look at an ancient artifact and really take the time to appreciate what lies before you. Staring up at you is a ghost– a physical echo– that reverberates across the millennia. The artifact before you has survived by sheer luck, and we are fortunate that it remains at all. I tried to convey this to my students, and in their papers, I found that students wanted to write about what it was like to study the papyri up close. This was unprompted by me, and I was astounded at the care and reflection they undertook to share their own perspectives:

Chloe Logan (class of 2024, writing about the cartonnage fragment): “I must remark how fortunate we are to have an incredible artifact in such good condition as a window to the distant past. I hope we will have more research on the verso side of this astonishing relic.” [Indeed, it is being studied by a scholar in Europe for publication soon!]

Ethan Schiffman (class of 2027): “I enjoyed visiting the Bancroft Library and seeing the large Tebtunis Papyrus collection. I can now better appreciate the magnitude of the time-consuming task of the care involved in preserving the fragile papyri and the difficulties in translating and editing these texts.”

John Soejoto (class of 2027): “By exploring each papyrus, even if only a vague or unproven hypothesis is formed, historians increase the existing body of knowledge and give the future academic community further means to discover the history of bygone ages.”

Wilder Brix Burke (class of 2027): “[Seeing the papyrus in person after studying it for so long] brought a new perspective, a real understanding of the physical lengths such a text had gone to simply exist before me, 2000 years (and some change) later. It also speaks to the impressive ability of UC Berkeley as a whole that undergraduate students get to observe the most unique and fascinating parts of campus. I am grateful for the opportunity to see history before my eyes. These are the moments that remind me why I am a CAL student. Go bears!”

(Wilder Brix Burke poses with his chosen papyrus concerning the visit of a Roman senator to the town of Tebtunis, P.Tebt. 1.33.)

Primary Sources: 1980s Culture and Society

Posted on June 26, 2024 by UC Berkeley Library

Photograph showing protesters at an anti apartheid demonstration. The Library now has access to the online archive 1980s Culture and Society, which brings together resources from archival collections in the US, UK, Australia, and Canada.

“From the rise of Conservatism, the threat of nuclear war, and the AIDS crisis, to rampant consumerism, economic crises, and technological advancements, the 1980s was a turbulent and complex decade in which some individuals reaped significant benefits whilst others experienced severe poverty and hardship. Drawing on material from the late 1970s through to the early 1990s, this resource focuses on the voices of under-represented groups, grassroots organizations, and countercultural movements, addressing themes such as sexuality and identity, Black resistance movements, Indigenous land rights, subcultures, and health and social issues.

“These themes are represented within a broad range of sources which feature a variety of perspectives. For example, campaign materials, newspapers and newsletters from grassroots organizations and local communities provide a keen insight into social and political activism during the 1980s, whilst government papers and speeches from the Reagan and Thatcher administrations demonstrate the rise in political conservatism that dominated the decade. Collections of zines highlight the rich creativity and productivity of 80s subcultures, whilst mainstream and consumer culture is epitomised in fashion catalogues, photojournalism and gaming ephemera.” (Source)

Primary Sources: Colonial America

Posted on June 21, 2024June 20, 2024 by UC Berkeley Library

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The Library now has access to all five modules of Colonial America, a digital archive produced by AM (formerly Adam Matthew Digital). This resource provides an extensive collection of primary source documents related to the history of Colonial America, spanning from the 16th to the 18th century. The resource offers a comprehensive collection of materials that includes correspondences, diaries, maps, pamphlets, and other types of documents. These sources provide valuable insights into the social, political, and economic aspects of life during the colonial period in North America.

Primary Sources: Amnesty International Archives, 1961-1991

Posted on June 20, 2024 by UC Berkeley Library

Logo for Archives

The Library has recently acquired access to The Amnesty International Archives, which “publishes the records of Amnesty International from the second half of the twentieth century. The material contains minutes, reports, correspondence, first-hand accounts, publicity materials and circulars relating to human rights violations of all kinds in all parts of the world. Amnesty International’s remit of campaigning for an end to human rights abuses means that this archival material inherently relates to the themes of oppression, cruelty and degradation.” (Source)

Some of the collections include documents from outside the organization.

Primary Source: Egypt and the Rise of Nationalism

Posted on May 29, 2024 by UC Berkeley Library

The Library has acquired access to Egypt and the Rise of Nationalism, an online collection of British government documents “that capture and reflect an era spanning from the first appearance of a nationalist sensibility to its gradual entrenchment in public life through protests, journalistic agitprop, lobbying activities, sporadic violence, and then — almost as a denouement — through an ordered political process, in the context and perspective of Britain’s evolving policy regarding Egypt.” (source)

The resource includes more than 4000 primary source documents dating from the 1870s until approximately 1924.

Primary source: Public Housing, Racial Policies, and Civil Rights

Posted on May 28, 2024May 27, 2024 by UC Berkeley Library

Pictures of children engaged in activities in housing project

Public Housing, Racial Policies, and Civil Rights: The Intergroup Relations Branch of the Federal Public Housing Administration, 1936-1963 includes directives and memoranda related to the Public Housing Administration’s policies and procedures. Among the documents are civil rights correspondence, statements and policy about race, labor-based state activity records, local housing authorities’ policies on hiring minorities, court cases involving housing decisions, racially-restrictive covenants, and news clippings. The intra-agency correspondence consists of reports on sub-Cabinet groups on civil rights, racial policy, employment, and Commissioner’s staff meetings.

For a better understanding of the scope and arrangement of this colletion, consult the guide that was created for the original microfilm publication.

Primary source: Environmental History: Conservation and Public Policy in America, 1870-1980

Posted on May 27, 2024 by UC Berkeley Library

Crisis spots in conservation is the title of this pamphlet from the Izaak Walton League of America The Library has gained access to the online archive “Environmental History: Conservation and Public Policy in America, 1870-1980” thanks to the Institute for Governmental Studies Library’s contribution of nearly 2,000 items to this collection.

A detailed description from the vendor’s website:

Starting in the late nineteenth century, in direct response to the Industrial Revolution, forces in social and political spheres struggled to balance the good of the public and the planet against the economic exploitation of resources. Environmental History: Conservation and Public Policy in America, 1870–1980 chronicles various responses in the United States to this struggle through key primary sources from individual activists, advocacy organizations, and government agencies.

Collections Included

Papers preserved at Yale University of George Bird Grinnell, a founding member of the Boone and Crockett Club, one of the earliest American wildlands preservation organizations; a founder of the first Audubon Society and New York Zoological Society; and editor for 35 years of the outdoorsman magazine Forest and Stream, which played a key role as an early sponsor of the national park movement and Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918.
Records housed at the Denver Public Library of the American Bison Society, an organization that sought to save the American bison from extinction and succeeded as the first American wildlife reintroduction program.
Also housed at the Denver Public Library, the papers of key women conservationists, such as Rosalie Edge and Velma “Wild Horse Annie” Johnston. Edge formed the Emergency Conservation Committee to establish Hawk Mountain Sanctuary (the first preserve for birds of prey), clashed with the Audubon Society over its policy of protecting songbirds at the expense of predatory species, and was a leading advocate for establishing the Olympic and Kings Canyon national parks. Johnston worked to end the capture and killing of wild mustang horses and free-roaming donkeys and lobbied to protect all wild equine species.
Documents held at various institutions of the “father of forestry” Joseph Trimble Rothrock, who served as the first president and founder of the Pennsylvania Forestry Association and Pennsylvania’s first forestry commissioner. Rothrock’s work acquiring land for state parks and forests illustrates the role of key actors at state and regional levels.
Project histories and reports of the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation from the National Archives and Records Administration, chronicling the bureau’s work on projects including Belle Fourche, South Dakota; Grand Valley, Colorado; Klamath, Oregon; Lower Yellowstone, Montana; Shoshoni, Wyoming; and more.
Select gray literature on conservation and environmental policy from the Institute of Governmental Studies Library at the University of California at Berkeley. This vast array of documents issued by state, regional, and municipal agencies; advocacy organizations; study groups; and commissions from the 1920s into the 1970s cover wildlife management, land use and preservation, public health, air and water quality, energy development, and sanitation.

Primary Source: FBI Files on Martin Luther King, Jr.

Posted on May 27, 2024 by UC Berkeley Library

Martin Luther King, Jr., speaking at a podium at the March on Washington — By White House Staff Photographers. Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=546670

Full text access to the FBI’s file on the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. is available on the GALE platform. “The 44,000-page case file … documents the bureau’s role in finding Ray and obtaining his conviction. The file also includes background information amassed by the FBI on Dr. King’s social activism.”

Black Freedom Struggle in the 20th Century: Federal Government Records, on the Proquest platform, includes the two FBI files on Martin Luther King, Jr. Part 1
“details the heavy surveillance and painful harassment that J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI directed against America’s foremost civil rights leader throughout the 1960s.” Part 2 consists of verbatim transcripts and detailed summaries of telephone conversations between King and one of his most trusted confidants, Stanley D. Levinson.

Primary Sources: Decolonization: Politics and Independence in Former Colonial and Commonwealth Territories

Posted on May 3, 2024May 2, 2024 by UC Berkeley Library

Pokela leader of the PAC The Gale digital archive Decolonization: Politics and Independence in Former Colonial and Commonwealth Territories includes primary sources related to the complex process of decolonization across 60 former colonial territories and Commonwealth nations in the 20th century. The core content consists of over 250,000 pages of rare pamphlets, newsletters, correspondence, posters, and other ephemera produced by political parties, pressure groups, trade unions, and grassroots movements. This includes the Political Pamphlets collection from the Institute of Commonwealth Studies, African Trade Union pamphlets from Nuffield College at Oxford, and the Marjorie Nicholson Papers on international trade unionism.

This archive is structured into thematic sections that address different facets of decolonization. These sections cover topics such as the rise of nationalist movements, key figures who led their nations to independence, and the residual impacts of colonial rule including economic dependencies and the development of new national identities. Additionally, it explores the involvement of international bodies like the United Nations in supporting decolonization efforts.