The Oral History Center’s Advocacy and Philanthropy project tells the history of our world from the perspective of those who went above and beyond to help shape it. From local Bay Area volunteers to international activists, these interviews serve as a guide through history, highlighting some of the prominent social concerns and reform movements of the last century.
For a look into the Progressive Era of the early twentieth century, you can read interviews from UC Berkeley alumni Adeline Toye Cox and Emma McCaughlin, who focused their volunteer efforts on fledgling organizations such as Planned Parenthood and the League of Women Voters. Or, if you’re interested in the 1940s and 1950s, several of the interviewees in this project discuss their involvement with postwar activism, including Edith Simon Coliver, who served as an interpreter during the Nuremberg trials, and Florette Pomeroy, who worked with the United Nations to repatriate lost children.
The project only continues to grow from there, with countless interviews on the social concerns of the latter half of the twentieth century. Carol Rhodes Sibly, a Berkeley community leader, touches on the movement to integrate schools in the East Bay, while Sally Lilienthal recounts her long-term commitment to preventing the proliferation of nuclear weapons through her organization, the Ploughshares Fund.
If that’s not enough, take a look at some of the highlights from this rich collection of interviews.
Midge Wilson with daughter Ashley. Wilson founded the Bay Area Women’s and Children’s Center in the Tenderloin district of San Francisco.
Newel Perry: The California Council for the Blind
Newel Perry
Newel Perry was a leading figure in disability activism in the early twentieth century, establishing the influential California Council of the Blind in 1934. Blind himself from the age of eight, Dr. Perry advocated for the self-sufficiency of individuals who were blind and visually impaired, and sought to increase their economic opportunities, particularly for students who wished to attend university. Throughout the mid-twentieth century, the Council was credited for a wealth of progressive legislation for Californians with disabilities, in addition to inspiring the larger National Federation of the Blind, established in 1940.
Elinor Heller: A Volunteer in Politics, in Higher Education, and on Governing Boards
Hailing from San Francisco, Elinor Heller was a former committeewoman for California in the Democratic National Committee (1948–1952) and chairwoman of the University of California Board of Regents. In her work with the Committee, she witnessed the appointment of Harry Truman as vice president and his eventual rise to the presidency, while her time with the Regents overlapped with the influential free speech movement led by Berkeley students. In addition to her volunteer work with the League of Women Voters and other organizations, this interview covers Heller’s thoughts on major political campaigns of the mid-century and university-student relationships.
Isabel Wong-Vargas: Commerce, Industry, and Labor, Family & Personal Philanthropy in Peru, China and the United States
Isabel Wong Vargas
A jack of all trades, Isabel Wong-Vargas was an entrepreneur, restaurant developer, and philanthropist who founded the highly successful restaurant, La Caleta, in Peru. Wong-Vargas spent much of her life in China and Peru before settling in the Bay Area in 1966, where she was named San Francisco’s honorary consul for Peru. In this expansive interview, Wong-Vargas discusses her memories of World War II and the Japanese occupation of Hong Kong, gender roles and divorce in pre-revolution China, Peruvian business practices, and her later years in the Bay Area.
Midge Wilson: An Oral History
Midge Wilson was an activist and community leader who founded the Bay Area Women’s and Children’s Center in the Tenderloin district of San Francisco in the 1980s. A longtime resident of the Tenderloin, Wilson’s dedication to the community was extensive: She helped to establish clothing drives, youth programs, and recreation centers, as well as the neighborhood’s first public school, the Tenderloin Community School. In this interview, Wilson discusses her extensive work with the Bay Area Women’s and Children’s Center, fundraising strategies, youth programs and education, and changes to the Tenderloin community in the 1980s and beyond.
Ernesto Galarza: The Burning Light
Ernesto Galarza
Another household name, Ernesto Galarza was an influential labor organizer whose activism in the late 1940s laid the groundwork for the Chicano movement of the 1960s. Born in Jalcocotán, Mexico and immigrating to the United States at a young age, he began organizing strikes against the DiGiorgio Corporation in 1948 and worked closely with the American Federation of Labor’s National Agricultural Workers Union. In this collection of speeches and discussions, Galarza discusses data-driven methods of community activism, as well as his years as a professor and the challenges of bilingual education.
Find these and all the Oral History Center’s interviews from the search feature on our home page. Search by name, keyword, and several other criteria. Find projects, including the Advocacy and Philanthropy —Individual Interviews project, through the Projects tab on our home page.
All in all, the narrators in our Advocacy and Philanthropy project had a profound impact on the communities around them, whether big or small, local or global. So if you’re looking for a bit of advice or mentorship from celebrated leaders, look no further: Get reading, and get inspired.
Lauren Sheehan-Clark, a recent graduate of UC Berkeley, studied history and English, and was an editorial assistant at the Oral History Center.
Further Reading and Resources from The Bancroft Library
Blind Educator: The Story of Newel Lewis Perry, by Thomas Buckingham. BANC; xF860.P42.B8
Farm Workers and Agri-business in California, by Ernesto Galarza. Bancroft ; F862.2G14
Interviews on the University of California loyalty oath controversy. Bancroft ; Phonotape 3799 C:1-9. Interviews conducted for David P. Gardner’s thesis, The University of California loyalty oath controversy.
Newel Perry papers. BANC MSS 67/33 c. Presidential campaign, 1940. Democratic Party. Bancroft Folio ; f JK2256 1940d. Party platform, printed copies of speeches, pamphlets, broadsides, clippings and dodgers used in the 1940 presidential campaign of the Democratic Party.
About the Oral History Center
The Oral History Center of The Bancroft Library preserves voices of people from all walks of life, with varying political perspectives, national origins, and ethnic backgrounds. We are committed to open access and our oral histories and interpretive materials are available online at no cost to scholars and the public. You can find our oral histories from the search feature on our home page. Search by name, keyword, and several other criteria. Sign up for our monthly newsletter featuring think pieces, new releases, podcasts, Q&As, and everything oral history. Access the most recent articles from our home page or go straight to our blog home.
It’s been a topsy-turvy couple of years. But it’s not the only time in recent memory that the world’s turned upside down. As the Omicron variant has once again derailed our path to normalcy, I decided to search the Oral History Center’s collection to see what our interviewees have described as topsy-turvy. Referencing the trivial to some of the most challenging times in recent history, those who used the adjective included household names like Chief Justice Earl Warren and California Supreme Court Justice Cruz Reynoso, as well as artists, urban planners, venture capitalists, and Rosie the Riveters. Topics raised include the rise of Hitler, atomic weapons, the Great Depression, educational equity, campaign finance, messy houses, and downtown San Francisco. Here are the results.
See below for a detailed description of how to search our collection by a keyword like topsy-turvy.
Mannequin after the Operation Cue atomic blast, 1955 (Photo: National Archives)
The rise of Hitler
Betty Hardison: Rosie the Riveter World War II American Home Front Oral History Project
“The world was beginning to be topsy-turvy. That was around 1939, when Hitler was not being very friendly.”
During World War II, Betty Hardison worked at the Mare Island Naval Shipyards for the department responsible for repairing ships damaged during Pearl Harbor. Here she reflects on why she gave up her dream of university and journalism and took her first job.
Betty Hardison
When it was time to go off to school, I sold my clarinet and I went to Armstrong Business College in Berkeley. . . . It no longer exists, but it was a very prominent business school at the time. I took secretarial and all phases of business. But at that time, then, the world was beginning to be topsy-turvy. That was around 1939, when Hitler was not being very friendly. . . . Journalism was a strong goal. I had been editor of the yearbook and things like that, so I thought that I wanted to go to the university and take journalism. But then with the world being turned upside-down, I went for my first job.
Related discussion within the interview: educational expectations for women, life in Calistoga, California during the Great Depression
Downtown San Francisco
Robert Riley: 1988–2000 Curator of Media Arts, SFMOMA 75th Anniversary
“He found San Francisco to be completely topsy-turvy, vertiginous, and absolutely mad.”
Steve McQueen’s “Drumroll” on display (Photo: Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art)
Robert Riley, the curator of media arts for the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, recalled the inspiration for artist Steve McQueen’s work, Drumroll. McQueen had visited San Francisco during the exhibit of his work, Bear, in the early 1990s.
When he was in San Francisco, he experienced the hurly-burly, topsy-turvy development of the downtown—there was a lot of construction when he was here. There was traffic mayhem. . . . He found San Francisco to be completely topsy-turvy, vertiginous, and absolutely mad. He work-shopped an idea here of putting a camera lens into the drain hole of a striped orange construction barrel, which he borrowed. He’s a large man. He decided to start pushing the barrel down the street and just telling people to look out.
Related discussion within the interview: acquisition of Steve McQueen’s work, Bear; the development of Drumroll
Atomic bomb testing
Jean Fuller: Organizing Women: Careers in Volunteer Politics, Law, and Policy Administration
“Was that the mannequin whose head was cut off? Do you remember?”
Jean Fuller, director of women’s activities of the Federal Civil Defense Administration, 1954–58, was present at an atomic bomb test explosion in May 1955, dubbed Operation Cue. Conducted by the Atomic Energy Commission outside of Las Vegas, the test was designed to determine how the blast would affect people (represented by mannequins), food, and various structures. Looking at before and after photos of a test home, Fuller discusses the results with her interviewer, Miriam Stein.
Jean Wood Fuller, 1958 (Photo: Federal Civil Defense Administration/Internet Archive)
Fuller: Now, here’s the before scene of that living room where we saw the man all topsy-turvy. As you see there were draperies and there were Venetian blinds. Now, had they had the draperies pulled completely across, the blinds probably would not have done quite as much damage but they were only as people normally leave them.
Stein: Was that the mannequin whose head was cut off? Do you remember?
Fuller: No, he was upside down here someplace.
Stein: That’s right. He was hanging over a chair.
Fuller: Yes, but he undoubtedly would have been dead.
Related discussion within the interview: detailed account of the atomic test
Campaign finance
Earl Warren Sr.: Conversations with Earl Warren on California Government
“Some poor son of a gun with no money but with a great issue will come along, and he’ll just turn them topsy-turvy.”
Earl Warren, who attended UC Berkeley as an undergraduate and also received his law degree from Berkeley Law, was governor of California and chief justice of the United States Supreme Court. Here he discusses campaign finance with his interviewer, Amelia Fry, and an editor from Doubleday and Company, Luther Nichols, who was assisting Warren with his autobiography.
Official paining of Earl Warren as governor of California
Nichols: I think Alioto spent half a million dollars—
Warren: More than that.
Nichols: It came out to something like six dollars a voter — six dollars a vote—
Warren: Well, I’ll tell you. Of course, it’ll go along that way and then some poor son of a gun with no money but with a great issue will come along, and he’ll just turn them topsy-turvy. Now, you take that fellow who was elected—was it governor or senator—in Florida this year [1971]. He was a little country lawyer, Chiles, his name is— He’s a little country lawyer, he had no money of any kind to spend, but he told them he was going to start in the north of Florida and was going to walk clear through the state making his campaign. And, by George, he did. He’d arrange every way that— To start in the morning where there was a television station, and they’d pick him up there, say something about him, and he’d always stop at a television station at night. [Laughter] He got publicity that way and never spent a nickel on it, and he went all through the state, and he beat the whole outfit. [Laughter]
Fry: And he got all that free TV time!
Warren: Oh yes, he got all that free TV time.
Fry: He must have had a million dollars of TV time!
Warren: [Laughter] And never paid a dime for it!
Related discussion within the interview: decision to run for governor, campaign finance
Education
Justice Cruz Reynoso: California Supreme Court Justice, Professor of Law, Vice-Chair United States Commission on Human Rights, and 2000 Presidential Medal of Freedom Recipient
“Somehow those parents, when they have come to a meeting, have felt uncomfortable, as my parents did when they went to a PTA meeting.”
Cruz Reynoso, who received his law degree from Berkeley Law, was the first Hispanic California State Supreme Court justice. Here he reflects on race relations and parental involvement in schools.
Cruz Reynoso (Photo: UC Davis School of Law)
I will tell you a story because it turns things topsy-turvy. I may have told you about this. I was invited to go speak on a Saturday to a parent-student group in a school in the Los Angeles area. When I got there, I noticed that practically everybody involved was Spanish-speaking, and a great majority of the kids there were there, but the leadership of the PTA and practically everybody in charge was Latino. So I asked, “Is this an entirely Latino school? Do you have some other folk?” And they said, “Oh yes, about 20 percent of our students are Anglo.” And I said, “Well, where are the Anglo parents?” And they said, “We don’t know. We keep inviting them; they just don’t come.” I was bemused because I have heard that story told a hundred times about Latino parents by Anglo parents, “You know we keep sending these notices. They don’t come. They must not be—” They don’t say this, but the implication is “they must not be interested in education or must not be interested in their kids.” Well, I just said, “Maybe you ought to do something more so they feel comfortable when they come to these meetings and so on.” Something is not quite right when 20 percent of the parents don’t come to a Saturday function that is supposed to be good for everybody. I don’t know what they have done right or wrong, I really don’t. I nonetheless have the absolute sense that they haven’t done enough. Somehow those parents, when they have come to a meeting, have felt uncomfortable, as my parents did when they went to a PTA meeting. And we as human beings are smart enough to be able to figure things out on how to make those folk feel more comfortable and so on.
Related discussion within the interview: affirmative action generally, and in particular at UC Berkeley
Venture capital partnerships
Paul Bancroft III: Early Bay Area Venture Capitalists: Shaping the Economic and Commerce, Industry, and Labor Landscape
“Others are saying the world has kind of gone topsy-turvy today—I don’t mean today, but up until recently.”
Paul “Pete” Bancroft was an early participant in the venture capital industry and president, CEO, and director of Bessemer Securities Corporation. Mr. Bancroft also devoted considerable time to The Bancroft Library, which was founded by his great grandfather, Hubert Howe Bancroft.
Paul “Pete” Bancroft
It finally evolved, unfortunately, to the point where the venture capital partnerships were investing so much money that with the fees they were getting, the 1 percent to 2.5 percent of the assets, that they were making more money that way than they were on the profits that were being made when the investments were sold. It meant that they were really starting to lose sight of really making money on the companies they were investing in. Which is why Arthur Rock and others are saying the world has kind of gone topsy-turvy today— I don’t mean today [2010], but up until recently.
Related discussion within the interview: venture capital partnerships, CEO salaries, Bessemer Venture Partners
The de Young Museum. . . and the Monterey Bay Aquarium
Jim Chappell: Directing the Resurgence of SPUR & Urban Planning in San Francisco
“Who can hate a baby seal?”
Jim Chappell is a retired urban planner whose forty-year career focused on intertwining environmental conservation into urban design. As the director of the nonprofit SPUR (San Francisco Bay Area Planning and Urban Research Association), he helped shape San Francisco into a modern city. Here he discusses design and structural problems with two California landmarks.
Jim Chappell
The de Young Museum harkens back to the Midwinter Exposition of 1894, and then opened as the de Young Museum in 1895. It grew topsy-turvy over the years and was badly damaged in the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake. In fact, they built a steel exoskeleton around it to keep the walls from falling down. It had never been a great museum in terms of collection or building. And they are related. . . .
The [Monterey Bay] Academy was three or four years behind the de Young, so they got to learn from the mistakes, or at least knew what they were going to be up against when they started. Like the de Young, it was a building that had grown like topsy and was a mess of a building even before the earthquake. And then in the earthquake, pipes broke, which isn’t very good if you’re an aquarium. . . .
A baby seal
So in March 2000—this was three-and-a-half years after the first de Young bond vote—there was an $87 million bond on the ballot for the Academy. They needed 66 2/3 percent “yes.” They got sixty-seven. Phew. Just sneaked by. It was a different call than “old art.” It was “kids.” Their poster for the “yes” on the measure was a baby seal. Who can hate a baby seal?
Related discussion within the interview: California’s proposition system, the adaptability of Golden Gate Park, and the evolution of parks and recreation since the 1800s.
How to search for a keyword like topsy-turvy
You can find the interviews mentioned here and all our oral histories from the search feature on our home page. Search by name, keyword, and several other criteria. From our home page, I entered topsy turvy in the search box and clicked search. (I did not get a different result with/without a hyphen.) There were 18 total results, including when the interviewer used the term or it appeared in an introduction.
When you get to the results page, you might not initially see any oral histories. This is because the “full text” feature is off by default. On the results page, toggle on “Fulltext search.” A number of oral histories will populate on that page in a list. Please note that sometimes I get better results when I change the default “all the words” to “partial phrase.”
From the results list, click on any oral history. The next page will provide information about the oral history, such as interviewer, publication date, project, and so on. That page also enables you to read or download a PDF of the oral history. Without downloading, I entered the word “topsy” into the oral history search feature and selected “highlight all.” Then I just clicked on the arrow to be taken directly to the word. Repeat clicking on the arrow to see all examples of the search term within the oral history.
Jill Schlessinger is communications director and managing editor for the Oral History Center. She received her doctorate in history from UC Berkeley.
About the Oral History Center
The Oral History Center of The Bancroft Library has interviews on just about every topic imaginable. We preserve voices of people from all walks of life, with varying political perspectives, national origins, and ethnic backgrounds. We are committed to open access and our oral histories and interpretive materials, including our podcasts and articles, are available online at no cost to scholars and the public.
Dibs Earth by Philip Chapman-Bell on Flickr, CC-BY-NC-SA 2.0
Last month, the Executive Committee of the Librarians Association of the University of California, Berkeley (LAUC-B) unanimously endorsed a resolution written by its Committee on Diversity stressing the importance of the continued acquisition of print materials during the pandemic and beyond. The statement reflected on temporary changes to the UC Berkeley Library’s collection development policies and the lasting impact they might have. LAUC-B chair Ramona Collins wrote in an email, “[. . .] the focus on acquiring more digital and fewer print resources can lead to further suppression of already underrepresented voices, topics and geographical areas.”
Faced with the prevalence of print publications from the Global South, East Asia, Central and Eastern Europe, as well as Eurasia, the spectrum of viewpoints collected and preserved by academic libraries risks becoming impoverished. “Strong and diverse collections like Berkeley’s inspire and allow researchers to immerse themselves in cutting-edge discovery and teaching,” reads the statement, “but what happens when the acquisition of diverse resources becomes vulnerable to reduced funding or reprioritization?”
Indonesia: Spectacles of Small-scale Gold Mining, is now available online. Hosted by UC Berkeley’s Environmental Design Library, Professor Nancy Peluso’s photography exhibit explores gold extraction — and the people who live from it — in the West Kalimantan region of Indonesian Borneo. More than 100 high resolution images taken between 2014 and 2016 provide graphic insight into the daily work, tools and lives of the men and women who make their livelihoods in the Bornean gold fields. This exhibit is one of more than 50 exhibits in the multi-venued Extraction: Art on the Edge of the Abyss project.
The Bancroft Library has recently completed the digitization of nearly 150,000 items related to the confinement of Japanese Americans during World War II as part of a two-year effort to select, prepare, and digitize these primary source records as part of a grant supported by the National Park Service’s Japanese American Confinement Sites Grant Program. This program helps to support the preservation and interpretation of U.S. confinement sites where Japanese Americans were detained during World War II. This recent project, The Japanese American Internment Sites: A Digital Archive, represents our fourth grant from this program, which together have culminated in over 530,000 primary resource materials being made available online.
The project focused on the U.S. War Relocation Authority (WRA) files from the Japanese American Evacuation and Resettlement Records (BANC MSS 67/14 c). The WRA was created in 1942 to assume jurisdiction over the incarceration of Japanese Americans during the war. Between 1942-1946, the agency managed the relocation centers, administered an extensive resettlement program, and oversaw the details of the registration and segregation programs. These newly digitized records from the Washington Office headquarters and the district, field, and regional offices, formally document WRA management of internment of Japanese Americans in “relocation” centers and resettlement of approved individuals under supervision in the eastern states. Digitized materials document the registration of individuals; disturbances such as strikes; policies and attitudes; daily life in the camps including educational and employment programs; correspondences and other writings by evacuees; Japanese American service in the armed forces; and public opinion.
Since 2011, the Bancroft has been awarded four grants from the National Park Service’s Japanese American Confinement Sites Grant Program. The previous grants have digitized records from the Japanese American Evacuation and Resettlement Study and archival collections selected from individual internee’s personal papers, photographs, maps, artworks, and audiovisual materials. The Bancroft’s Japanese American Evacuation and Resettlement: A Digital Archive website (http://bancroft.berkeley.edu/collections/jacs) brings together all the digitized content and the recently published LibGuide (https://guides.lible.berkeley.edu/internment) that explains how to use and access these collection resources.
As we now embark on our recently awarded fifth grant from this program, we look forward to bringing even more collections online to support researcher access. We are honored and grateful to be able to make these important resources available to help interpret this period in American history and to preserve them for future generations.
The project was led by digital project archivist Lucy Hernandez and principal investigator Mary Elings, Assistant Director of Bancroft and Head of Technical Services. Special thanks to Julie Musson, digital collections archivist at Bancroft and Jennafer Prongos, BackStage Library Works technician for their work on this project, as well as support from Theresa Salazar, Bancroft curator of Western Americana. Many thanks to the Library Information Technology group at the University Library for their work in managing the files, maintaining the information systems used in the project, and ensuring the publication and long term preservation of the digitized collections through our partnership with the California Digital Library.
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This project was funded, in part, by a grant from the U.S. Department of the Interior, National Park Service, Japanese American Confinement Sites Grant Program. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the U.S. Department of the Interior.
This year’s welcome back newsletter for those working in the romance languages focuses mostly on digital resources. After abrupt closures in March due to the global pandemic, the UC Berkeley Library has recently resumed acquisitions of non-digital formats but the bulk of this material remains in transit or is still being processed. For the most up-to-date information about the evolving services in the Library, please consult the Library services and resources during COVID-19 page.
Dibs Earth by Philip Chapman-Bell on Flickr, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0
Along with these titles, find additional ebooks on art, race, and social justice; image collections from the Bancroft Library on Calisphere; and films and videos available through our Kanopy subscription. This resource guide provides a sample of some of the resources available online through the U.C. Berkeley Library’s collections.
When I first began at Cal, I was excited to experience dorm life, take interesting classes, and study with my friends in the library. Before working at the Oral History Center, I viewed the library as merely a physical space to sit and study. However, working at the Oral History Center (OHC) quickly dispelled this false notion.
Through my tenure at the OHC and my experience with research from my classes, I have learned that the library is more than a building in which to study. The library offers a multitude of resources for students — databases encompassing different topics and mediums such as ProQuest for newspaper articles, librarians ready to assist students in planning out papers, and primary sources such as personal interviews. After an informative meeting with a librarian introducing all these resources and more, I quickly began to utilize them in my research. I spoke to a librarian who helped me find multiple sources for my papers; I learned how to navigate the infinite databases accessible to students; and I learned which database to use to find specific types of sources.
Katherine Y. Chen, communications assistant with the Oral History Center of The Bancroft Library
Furthermore, my work at the OHC greatly helped me hone my research skills. I learned how to navigate an archive, how to find specific information, and had the opportunity to help fellow students as well. While promoting the Carmel and Howard Friesen Prize in Oral History Research to my peers, I was able to utilize all the skills I had learned. I helped students navigate the OHC’s archive to find interviews, and gave advice on further research.
I became very familiar with the different projects and subject areas the OHC has to offer. My personal favorites are the Women Political Leaders project and the Dreyer’s Grand Ice Cream project. It was gratifying and empowering to read about the impact women had on politics, especially as an Asian American woman who intends to pursue law. Furthermore, ice cream is a favorite treat of mine, and to learn about how Dreyer’s Grand Ice Cream became widely popular was incredibly interesting.
My experience at the OHC exposed me to the many resources the library has to offer. In turn, I aimed to introduce my peers to the wonders of the library. For example, my friend was writing a research paper for her class and was having trouble keeping her sources in one accessible place. Based on what I learned, I recommended the saving grace of my paper to her — Zotero. Zotero is a program used to store and cite sources, and a librarian recommended it to me after I described having the same issue. Once downloading Zotero, my friend had a much easier time with her sources, and citing them was even easier.
Additionally, I recommended an oral history to another friend of mine who needed to find a primary source for their paper. They needed a source from a specific era, and I remembered reading over oral histories that fit what they were looking for. I sent over the link for the AIDS Epidemic in San Francisco Oral History Project. I wanted to show my peers that the library is not just a building to study in, but a plethora of resources right underneath their noses.
To everyone reading, especially Cal students, take the time to learn more about the resources at the library. Take advantage of all the library has to offer, and I guarantee you will be all the better for it.
Katherine Y. Chen just finished her first year at Berkeley. She is majoring in rhetoric with a minor in public policy.
For the most current and relevant publications from Latin America and Spain, ebooks are not always the first format choice, however we continue to build up the Library’s digital holding as funding permits. In light of the current COVID-19 pandemic, collaboration among librarians has taken on a new dimension as we work together to provide access to digital and digitized library resources like never before.
With joint support from the Arts & Humanities and Social Sciences divisions this year, we selected 550 ebooks on a broad range of topics and disciplines in early January of this year. Part of an annual collaboration over the past three years, these digital monographs are brought to us from one of Spain’s most important vendors for ebooks—Digitalia Hispánica. Below we’ve highlighted a few of these newly acquired ebooks from publishers like Arte Público Press, CSIC, Fondo de Cultura Económica, Iberoamericana Vervuert, LOM, Páginas de Espuma, Renacimiento and more.
To browse the entire list of more than 2,600 Digitalia ebooks in Berkeley’s collection, search OskiCat by the handle “Digitalia e-books.”
Liladhar Pendse, Librarian for Caribbean and Latin America Studies Collections
Claude Potts, Librarian for Romance Language Collections
“Our shelves are closed, but as long as your screens are open,
you’ll have access to most of our resources.”
UC Berkeley students, faculty, and staff are able to take advantage of HathiTrust’s Emergency Temporary Access Service, which provides access to digital versions of millions of the physical volumes held by libraries across the 10-campus University of California system — plus UC’s two expansive off-site library storage facilities. For Berkeley faculty, students, and staff, this opens up a trove of materials,” said Associate University Librarian Salwa Ismail, who worked with HathiTrust to bring the service to fruition for Berkeley. Access the resources by going to the HathiTrust Digital Library. You can view the materials from anywhere with an internet connection — no VPN or special setup is required. This was first announced publicly via the Library’s news story “Need a book from the UC Berkeley Library while we are sheltering in place? Check here first.” For more information, read HathiTrust’s guide and FAQ.
Five helpful tips:
Make sure you log in as a “partner institution” with your CalNet ID
Before searching the catalog, select “full view only” checkbox at the top to retrieve only those works that are eligible for reading
Click “temporary access” to check out the digitized work for one hour at a time (renewable)
Only one user may check out a book at a time (or one user per each copy of the book we hold)
Use the “return early” button to make it available for another user
Founded in 2008, HathiTrust is a not-for-profit collaborative of academic and research libraries preserving 17+ million digitized items. HathiTrust offers reading access to the fullest extent allowable by U.S. copyright law, computational access to the entire corpus for scholarly research, and other emerging services based on the combined collection. HathiTrust members steward the collection — the largest set of digitized books managed by academic and research libraries — under the aims of scholarly, not corporate, interests.
