Special Research Collections

On January 1, 2022, an estimated 400,000 sound recordings published before 1923 will enter the public domain thanks to a law passed in 2018. This is significant because, until 2022, no sound recording has entered the public domain due to copyright expiration. 

The UC Santa Barbara Library has already digitally preserved over 60,000 of those recordings from its collection, which will now be freely accessible to anybody, for any purpose, in high-resolution formats. 

Around the world, there exist repositories of writings, imagery, and tools that mark the evolution of humankind, but what are the sounds of our shared history?

For the last 35 years, collector John Levin has been amassing a collection of brown wax cylinders--one of our earliest media for recorded sound--to shed light on this question.

Count Dracula, Vlad the Impaler, and vampire pop culture may not seem like obvious areas for scholarly research. However, couple Melinda Hayes, University of Southern California (USC) Rare Books Librarian, and Wayne Shoaf, USC Metadata and Digital Librarian recognized this undervalued collecting area and have spent the last 30 years amassing a fascinating and scholarship-worthy collection of vampire ephemera.

About 2,000 rare early opera recordings, including cylinders and 78 RPMs valued at $300,000, were recently donated to the UCSB Library Special Research Collections Performing Arts Collection to be digitized and made available to the public. 

The collection was donated by Catherine Glaze, who inherited it from her father, Harry Smith Glaze, Jr., who passed away in April. A Stanford-educated chemical engineer by trade, he was an enthusiastic traveler and opera aficionado. 

Each year, the Kenneth Karmiole Endowed Research Fellowship program invites scholars from around the world to apply for a unique one to three months opportunity to pursue research, using primary source materials only available at UCSB Library’s Special Research Collections. 

In 2018, conceptual artist RT Livingston gifted her extensive collection of artwork and related materials to the UC Santa Barbara Library’s Special Research Collections. Livingston’s body of work, primarily inspired by human relationships with the environment, ranges from photography and videography to large-scale installations, painting, and music.

In early September 2021, California poet Michael Hannon donated materials surrounding his life’s works to the UC Santa Barbara Library Special Research Collections. Inspired by reflections on religion, philosophy, mortality, and the impermanence of life, Hannon’s poetic journey began in 1960, toward the end of the Beat Generation when New American poetry came to the fore. The acquisition is a notable addition to the Library’s growing literary collection.

Considered to be one of the first truly independent labels, Gennett Records will be the next record company to join the Discography of American Historical Recordings (DAHR), a database of master recordings made by American record companies during the 78 rpm era edited by a team of researchers at UCSB Library.

Research by students at three separate universities on a collection in the UC Santa Barbara Library that hasn’t been studied extensively since the 1970s is gaining attention - and funds - from several prestigious institutions.

In a prime example of inter-library collaboration, the Santa Barbara Public Library (SBPL) recently partnered with the UCSB Library Special Research Collections to preserve more than 3,000 historic photos of Santa Barbara County collected by Santa Barbara native Edson Smith; 104 issues of Santa Barbara County’s first newspaper The Santa Barbara Gazette; and SBPL’s own archives.