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Santa Barbara: Libraries
Early Origins
The library first acquired a separate identity
in 1913 when the Santa Barbara State Normal School moved to the
Riviera campus; in 1914 it possessed 3,294 volumes. Manual arts,
home economics and teacher training materials, reflecting the normal
school curriculum of the time, predominated. Many were gifts of
Miss Adeline Mills, the school's first notable donor, who also contributed
furniture to the library room.
In 1913, the library assumed a more general character
with the gift of two private collections, the library of Ellwood
and Sarah Cooper, and the Roxana Lewis Dabney Memorial Collection.
Growth continued slowly to World War II; in 1929, there were 18,000
volumes, in 1939, 30,000. When the state college became a campus
of the University in 1944 there were some 40,000 books, pamphlets
and periodicals.
After World War II
With the addition of temporary wooden buildings,
the library survived the veteran enrollment surge after World War
II, and operated an industrial arts branch library on the Mesa Campus
until that campus site was turned over to the city of Santa Barbara
in 1957. When the Santa Barbara campus moved to the present location
in 1954, the library began a new era in its own building, one of
the first two permanent structures to rise on the new seashore campus.
Doubled in size in the spring of 1962, the library by 1965 was again
crowded with students and began storing thousands of volumes in
temporary buildings, awaiting construction of the eight-story University
library building scheduled for completion in 1967.
With substantial state support the library doubled
its holdings twice since 1958 when it was given the mission of ultimately
serving a full spectrum of advanced studies for a general campus.
Gifts to the library ranged from single items such as a copy of
the Coverdale Bible (1535) presented by C. Pardee Erdman to the
complete American Journal of Science from its commencement
in 1819, the gift of geologist A. I. Levorsen; especially noteworthy
was the Hammond library presented by Mrs. MacKinley Helm. Frank
H. Ball, second president of the school, presented his industrial
arts library of some 2,000 volumes to the library upon his retirement
in 1918. Scholarly libraries acquired by purchase and gift have
included Tocqueville scholar J. Peter Mayer's 13,000 volumes on
European political science and sociology; the Printers Collection
of Hobart Skofield; the anthropology collection willed by Professor
Norman Gabel; the geological libraries of W. S. W. Kew and Theo
Crook; the library of sociologist Kimball Young; several Hispanic
and Latin American collections--notably that of Professor Roland
D. Hussey, the Professor Hertzmann music collection, and the Near
Eastern archaeological library of Dr. Erich Schmidt.
Special Collections
Organized as a separate department in 1962, special collections
grew initially with gifts from Santa Barbara residents and scholars:
early botanical works by California horticulturalist Ellwood Cooper;
first editions of 19th century Americans such as Longfellow, Whittier
and Emerson from the Roxana Lewis Dabney Memorial of 1913; along
with other works which recalled the early curriculum of the school.
A major impetus was the post-war acquisition of large author collections:
the MacKinley Helm gift of Henry James and Matthew Arnold was followed
by the formation of comprehensive collections of Huxley, Beckett,
Kipling, Wells, Coleridge and Edmund Burke. The bloc purchase, as
well, of private libraries devoted to the Colombian novel, to 18th
century English and French political pamphlets, exemplified the
library policy of acquiring rare materials when needed in support
of academic programs.
The most widely known gift to come to the library
in state college days was the William Wyles Collection on Lincoln,
the Civil War, and Westward Expansion. Later deeded (1946) by Mr.
Wyles to the Santa Barbara campus of the University, together with
a trust fund, this collection grew steadily and later numbers 16,000
volumes and manuscripts and was a well-known center for studies
in the Civil War period.
Librarians
| Natalie L. Beach |
1913-1914 |
| Nellie E. Scholes |
1914-1919 |
| Aldine Winham |
1919-1926 |
| Katharine F. Ball |
1926-1947 |
| Donald C. Davidson |
1947- |
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