We invite you to attend “Art Against Artillery: Cultural Resilience in Times of War,” a panel discussion.
Date: December 4, 2025
Time: 10 am PST (8 pm Kyiv Time)
Registration: https://tinyurl.com/artagainstartillery
Organizer: Dr. Liladhar R. Pendse, Librarian for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies
The event is free and open to all, provided prior registration is completed. Please sign in to your individual Zoom account and then register. All are welcome!
Founded in 2007, Silver Sprocket (https://www.silversprocket.net/) is a comics publisher in the Bay Area scene. In a 2024 interview Avi Ehrlich represented the community as a “‘radical indie comic publisher’ representing historically excluded artists’ work.” [1]
On their About page in their website, they write that they are “a San Francisco-based publisher, retail shop, and gallery space championing socially conscious and independently produced comic books, graphic novels, and related arts.”
Here at UC Berkeley, we don’t usually buy the pins and posters, but we have been able to acquire a range of their wonderful comic and other bound graphic materials including a few of their Zines including the Abortion Pill Zine: A Community Guide to Misoprostol and Mifepristone by Isabella Rotman, Sage Coffey & Marnie Galloway (UC Library catalog record, cover image in the gallery below).
They also note that “All works will remain 100% artist owned. Our aim is always to support the artist in making the best possible version of their own vision.”
Some of our recent acquisitions include:
For more from the publisher at UC Berkeley, take a look at our UC Library Search.
Also note that most comics and graphic novels end up with the subject “COMICS & GRAPHIC NOVELS” and in the PN section of our Library stacks. If you want to Browse our comic material, consider heading down to the D level of the Main and looking for that PN section!
Request a purchase to let us know if you’re interested in other comic titles.
[1] Cheyenne Bearfoot, “Silver Sprocket Comics: Inside a Punk Comic Store in San Francisco,” KQED, June 20, 2024, https://www.kqed.org/education/538146/silver-sprocket-comics.
[2] avi, “About Silver Sprocket,” Silver Sprocket, accessed May 1, 2025, https://www.silversprocket.net/about/.
We currently have trials set up for several modules from Coherent Digital. We have selected modules from Policy Commons, Africa Commons, and Latin America Commons available until Nov 15, 2025.
Please submit your feedback to your librarian for Latin American and Caribbean Studies: Liladhar
Latin America Commons by Coherent Digital is a full-text, richly-indexed database that provides unified, cross-searchable access to millions of pages of Latin American and Latinx primary-source materials, including books, magazines, photographs, maps, letters, diaries, ephemera, videos, and audio files that were previously scattered across the internet and in archives. The project aims to preserve at-risk content, rare documents, and often overlooked resources spanning from the 16th to the 21st centuries, making it easier for scholars and students to discover vetted, high-quality material for research and study.
Physically located in Oakland, CA, speCt! (titles on Asterism) has been treating a reading public to beautiful poetry and visual art since 2012.[1] Founded by Gillian Hamel, Peter Burghardt, and Robert Andrew Perez, the group started printing on a C&P is a small letterpress.[2] The community publisher started with and continues to focus heavily on chapbooks, which they publish with beautiful covers and excellent printing. They also print the occasional full-length text with titles like Wildfires. Their authors, including Ching-In Chen, have won awards for their beautiful work, including the 2022 Markowitz Award.[3]
One can find information about their publications on Asterism and about their community activities, including readings, on their Instagram page.
To find out more about UC Berkeley’s collection of speCt!’s book, take a look at our UC Library Search.
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[1] “speCt!,” Asterism Books, accessed July 10, 2025, https://asterismbooks.com/publisher/spect.
[2] “speCt: A Retrospect!ve,” Small Press Traffic, 2022, https://www.smallpresstraffic.org/traffic-report/spect.
[3] Mai Tran, “Ching-In Chen and Morgan H Thomas Win 2022 Markowitz Award for Exceptional New LGBTQ Writers,” Lambda Literary, June 7, 2022, https://lambdaliterary.org/2022/06/ching-in-chen-and-morgan-h-thomas-win-2022-markowitz-award-for-exceptional-new-lgbtq-writers/.
To my delight, we’ve made our online exhibit Celebrating 21-century African Literatures exhibit live online through an ArcGIS StoryMap!
Alongside the celebration of the many, phenomenal books we display, we’ve also made material available about what kinds of publishers UC Berkeley Library has been collecting from across the continent.
Let me (Bee, the Lit Librarian) know if you have questions or note that there is information missing. Our thanks for to the many artists, authors, and magazine editors who’ve made this possible.
Since its inception in January 2021, Abalone Mountain Press (https://www.abalonemountainpress.com) has published several phenomenal compilations of poetry and zines. Amber McCrary, the founder, operates the press on operates on the traditional lands of the Akimel O’odham.[1]
To delight, this semester (Spring 2025), UC Berkeley’s Doe Library put in an order for five of Abalone Mountain Press’s recent publications. The chapbooks, anthology, and zines will be located in Doe Library’s main stacks.
Take a look at these or other Abalone Mountain Press books in our UC Berkeley Library.
Several of these authors contributed to The Diné Reader: An Anthology of Navajo Literature. You can find an interview with Amber McCrary about the Press in the September 2022 issue of Poetry.
Continue reading “Publisher Highlight: Abalone Mountain Press”
Recent acts of censorship of late night television talk show hosts Stephen Colbert and Jimmy Kimmel have spurred interest in not only reposting this ever pertinent blog post originally published on November 27, 2018 but also updating it with some relevant books acquired since then. With or without humor, we find both presidents still (or again) in power and in the satirical spotlight. Enjoy! Amusez-vous!
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As two of the oldest modern democracies, France and the United States share a long tradition of freedom of speech and of the press (and at times governmental censorship). The two societies have found catharsis in the mockery of their highest elected officials through caricatures, cartoons, and critical writings. Here are a few recent library acquisitions, in English and in French, from both sides of the Atlantic in this category of political critique:
Baldwin, Alec and Kurt Andersen. You Can’t Spell America Without Me: The Really Tremendous Inside Story of My Fantastic First Year As President Donald J. Trump (a So-Called Parody). New York: Penguin Press, 2017.
Battistella, Edwin L. Dangerous Crooked Scoundrels: Insulting the President, from Washington to Trump. 1st ed. United Kingdom: Oxford University Press, 2020.
Bourhis, Hervé and Rudy Spiessert. Trump de A à Z. Bruxelles: Casterman, 2017.
Burrell, Ginger R. Un[Hood]ed. Morgan Hill, CA: Midnight Moon Press, 2017.
Campion, Étienne. Le président toxique : enquête sur le véritable Emmanuel Macron. Paris: Robert Laffont, 2025.
Cole, David, and Melanie W. Stinnett. Rules for Resistance: Advice from Around the Globe for the Age of Trump. New York: The New Press, 2017.
Collard, Susan P., ed. Revolution Revisited : Emmanuel Macron and the Limits of Political Change in France. Abingdon, Oxon ; Routledge, 2025.
Connolly, William E. Aspirational Fascism: The Struggle for Multifaceted Democracy Under Trumpism. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2017.
Daniel, Jean-Marc. Macron: La valse folle de Jupiter. Paris: l’Archipel, 2018.
Darmon, Michaël. Les secrets d’un règne : dans les coulisses d’un quinquennat de crises. Paris: L’Archipel, 2021.
Dolez, Bernard et al., eds. L’entreprise Macron à l’épreuve du pouvoir. Fontaine: PUG, 2022.
Dosse, François. Macron, ou, Les illusions perdues : les larmes de Paul Ricoeur. Paris: Le Passeur éditeur, 2022.
Être postmoderne / Michel Maffesoli; postface de Hélène Strohl: Emmanuel Macron, icône ou fake de la postmodernité? Paris: Les Éditions du Cerf, 2018.
Filoche, Gérard. Macron, ou, la casse sociale. Paris: l’Archipel, 2018.
Fottorino, Éric and Joep Bertrams. Détrumpez-vous!, Paris: Gallimard, 2017.
Fourquet, Jérôme. Le nouveau clivage: mondialisation, libre-échange, métropolisation, flux migratoires : état des démocraties occidentales. Paris: Les éditions du Cerf, 2018.
Drezner, Daniel W. The Toddler in Chief : What Donald Trump Teaches Us about the Modern Presidency. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2020.
Genté, Régis. Notre homme à Washington : Trump dans la main des Russes. Paris: Bernard Grasset, 2024.
Christopher J. Gilbert. Caricature and National Character: The United States at War. Penn State University Press, 2021.
Giroux, Henry A. The Public in Peril: Trump and the Menace of American Authoritarianism. New York, NY: Routledge, 2018.
Hamming, Grant, and Natalie E. Phillips, eds. Interrogating The Visual Culture Of Trumpism. New York, NY: Routledge, 2025.
Johnston, David C. It’s Even Worse Than You Think: What the Trump Administration Is Doing to America. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2018.
Joly, Marc. La pensée perverse au pouvoir. Paris: Anamosa, 2024.
Lee, Bandy X. The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 27 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts Assess a President. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2017.
Lithgow, John. Dumpty : The Age of Trump in Verse. San Francisco: Chronicle Prism, an imprint of Chronicle Books, 2019.
Mayaffre, Damon. Macron, ou, Le mystère du verbe : ses discours décryptés par la machine. La Tour d’Aigues: Éditions de l’Aube, 2021.
Merchet, Jean-Dominique. Macron Bonaparte: Essai. Paris: Stock, 2017.
Mielczarek, Natalia. The Trump Presidency in Editorial Cartoons . 1st ed. Lanham: Lexington Books, 2023.
Mongin, Olivier, and Lucile Schmid. Emmanuel Macron à contretemps. Montrouge: Bayard, 2022.
Nanos, Nik. The Age of Voter Rage. London: Eyewear Publishing, 2018.
Ngono, Emmanuel. Sacré Macron : une aventure qui a vraiment bousculé le fonctionnement institutionnel français / Emmanuel Ngono. Morancez (France): Éditions Cana, 2023.
Taguieff, Pierre-André. Macron: miracle ou mirage? Paris: Éditions de l’Observatoire, 2017.
Toulouse, Anne. Dans la tête de Donald Trump. Paris: Stock, 2016.
Toulouse, Anne. L’art de “trumper”, ou, Comment la politique de Donald Trump a contaminé le monde. Monaco: Éditions du Rocher, 2024.
Trudeau, G. B. Day One Dictator: More Doonesbury in the Time of Trumpism. 1st ed. Cork: Andrews McMeel, 2024.
Trumpism: The Politics Of Gender in a Post-Propitious America / edited by Laura Finley and Matthew Johnson. Newcastle upon Tyne, UK; Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2018.
Willem. Macron: L’amour fou. Bordeaux: Les Requins marteaux, 2018.
Zef, Kak and Degreff. Macron, L’an I: pardon de vous le dire. Paris: Florent Massot, 2018.
Insert Press was found in 2005 by Mathew Timmons to focus on interdisciplinary and/or hybrid works.[1] Initially, Insert Press focused on poetry in chapbook form, but over the following decade turned to increasingly toward “translation, poetics, artist books.”[2]
Readers can find information about their publications and local, LA events on their Instagram page (https://www.instagram.com/insert.press/).
Take a look at at some of their recent titles.
For more at UC Berkeley, take a look at this publisher search for “Insert Press” through the UC Library Search.
[1] “About Insert Press,” Insert Press, accessed July 10, 2025, https://insert.press/.
[2] Matthew Timmons, Publisher Questionnaire: Insert Press, interview by Asterism, Blog, May 15, 2025, https://asterismbooks.com/.
It has been almost a year since Leah Sylva joined the Digital Collections Unit (DCU) at The Bancroft Library as the Digital Collections and Metadata Librarian. In that time, she has provided crucial technical services support, moving the program forward by building on its past successes. With Christina Velazquez Fidler at its head, the DCU has largely focused on how to “close the loop” in regards to descriptions of digital materials. This process of “closing the loop” refers to an integration of the data points created at various stages of representing the archival material in our care. In the Bancroft context, this translates to ensuring that digitized materials are represented in the records of their originating collections whenever possible.
Underscoring this issue is the iterative nature of archival description, especially in the digital context. As we work with digital materials, we hold in mind the goals of maintaining archival context and improving access and discovery. These goals can only be accomplished by strategic decision-making to guide processes of observation, evaluation, and action. This often requires returning to past projects to ensure that they are meeting current standards and needs of library users. One example of this is the DCU’s newly completed The Bancroft Library Archived Websites LibGuide which preserves and provides context to past digital projects that are no longer hosted on the Library website.
As archival material passes through discrete stages of arrangement and description, new data points are created:
Since these processes can be completed years apart, there are often overlapping fragments of metadata existing in different platforms without reference to one another. With limited resources and staff capacity, we are always making choices about what to prioritize and what to leave for another day, creating backlogs and technical debt that future generations must repay with effort and creative problem solving. With migrations between systems, changing accessibility standards, and shifts in the direction of our work, we understand that the digital landscape is ephemeral and in need of attention, maintenance, and augmentation. Digital projects offer new pathways for access and discovery alongside significant technical challenges that must be resolved as part of a process of quality control.
These recordings, comprising 130 videos from 8 distinct collections, were digitized under a Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR) grant to preserve audiovisual material in need of reformatting.
At the end of the project, the recordings were added to the Berkeley Library Digital Collections, but there were many inconsistencies and a lack of archival context for these materials. This necessitated a careful review of the digital objects and archival collection information to note what information existed in each system and where there were discrepancies.
This project is a prime example of “closing the loop” – circling back to the system of record, augmenting metadata, and ensuring that the various systems we employ connect to one another. It is only at the closing of this loop that we can truly consider a digitization project complete.
This approach is supported by the emerging Delivering Archives and Digital Objects: A Conceptual Model (DadoCM). This model acknowledges that while digital repositories are largely designed for managing single discrete objects, archival principles are focused on efficiently describing materials in the aggregate. This model is centered on facilitating access and provides a framework which aims to resolve the inherent tensions in archival description of digital collections through a series of guiding principles and technical structures. UC Berkeley Library’s maría a. matienzo, Head of the Application Development Services Department, is a contributor to the DadoCM and she has been a helpful resource in conceptualizing DadoCM.
Two core ideas of DadoCM that we can apply to our work:
The DCU’s focus on “closing the loop” lays down the foundation of DadoCM by keeping materials described within the context of their collections as well as maintaining connections through our canonical system of record, ArchivesSpace. We hope to continue implementing the DadoCM framework in our practices.
During FY 2024/2025, Leah added 891 digital objects to ArchivesSpace. The following finding aids were republished by Leah to include newly added digital objects from ArchivesSpace.
Looking ahead, we are excited to build on this momentum, and we are exploring how emerging technologies can enhance discovery and access to our collections. We are also continuing to learn from and contribute to our vibrant digital archives community. Our collaboration with our campus stakeholders is the cornerstone of this work, and we are eager to continue this journey together.
Post written by Christina Velazquez Fidler and Leah Sylva
For over 150 years, residents and visitors alike have not run short of reasons to support the claim, “There’s no place like California.” And since the 1960s, that claim has been echoed—albeit in whispers—among cannabis circles around the globe. This summer, Oral History Center historian Todd Holmes has been traveling up and down the state to document the overlooked history of California cannabis communities as part of the multidisciplinary project, Legacy Cannabis Genetics: People and their Plants, A Community-Driven Study. Funded in 2023 by a $2.7 million grant from the California Department of Cannabis Control, the project is now in its final year charting the history and genetic heritage of the state’s famed cannabis communities.
In many respects, the study can be seen as one of the first of its kind. The research team is composed of academic and community researchers from across the state: sociologist Dominic Corva from Cal Poly Humboldt; historian Todd Holmes from UC Berkeley’s Oral History Center; Genine Coleman from Origins Council, a nonprofit public policy and research institute serving the state’s historic rural cannabis farming regions; Khalil Ferguson of United CORE, a statewide equity advocacy organization representing the interests of Black, Indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC) in urban communities; and Eleanor Kuntz, co-founder of Canndor the world’s first cannabis herbarium, and co-founder and CEO of LeafWorks, a genomics and plant science company. Moreover, the project operates through Community-Based Participatory Research (CBPR), a methodology premised on a partnership approach to research that equitably involves community members, organizational representatives, and academic researchers in all aspects of the research process. “CBPR is an approach that not only affords community members an equal seat at the table,” Holmes explained, “but more importantly recognizes them as the real experts in this field.” Typically used in public health research, the CBPR approach of the project represents the first time the methodology has been used in cannabis research.
For the oral history component of the project, Holmes is conducting around 100 hours of oral history interviews with cannabis farmers and breeders throughout the state. When complete, the oral histories will comprise the California Cannabis Oral History Collection at the Bancroft Library, another first-of-its-kind component of the project. “For most of the communities in this project, this is the first time they have told their stories,” Holmes explained. “It’s a powerful reminder of the importance of oral history and a real honor to help place California cannabis within the historical record.”
Be on the lookout for the release of the California Cannabis Oral History Collection in the fall of 2026. For more on the project, visit the Legacy Cannabis Genetics website.
