Special Research Collections

The Music Academy of the West and the UCSB Library have renewed a partnership to preserve and digitize the Academy’s archive of open reel tapes and transfer the organization’s paper archives to the UCSB Library, where they will be available for research, teaching, and personal enjoyment. Located in nearby Montecito, the Music Academy of the West has been developing “the next generation of great classically trained musicians” through its summer conservatory program and festival since 1947.

Newly retired U.S. Congresswoman Lois Capps, who first came to the region in 1964 when her husband, Walter Capps, was recruited to join the faculty at UC Santa Barbara, has donated her official papers to the campus. They will be housed in the UCSB Library Department of Special Research Collections.

Special Research Collections has acquired a collection of letters from famed author James Baldwin, as well as ephemera related to the Civil Rights Movement. Both collections—which are now open for research—highlight social justice organizing activities during the height of civil unrest in America.

UCSB Library is pleased to introduce a new “Student Assistant Spotlight Series,” posts written by our student employees that highlight the types of projects they work on. Our inaugural post is written by Wyatt Young, a fourth-year undergraduate majoring in History with a minor in the History of Art & Architecture. Wyatt has been working in Special Research Collections as a Processing Assistant for the past year. His areas of interest are public history, museum studies, twentieth-century U.S. culture, and the historiography of collections.

The Library of Alexandria, ancient Egypt’s hallowed center of classical learning, was designed to be a universal research center that contained all the books—or scrolls—in the world. Fast-forward 2,300 years. UCSB Library’s contribution to today’s version of a universal library is the Alexandria Digital Research Library (ADRL), an online platform we built to store and deliver the Library’s distinctive collections of digital research materials.

Allen Cohen is one for the books … and the paintings; and the poems; and the films; and the plays; and the opera, jazz and classical songs. And the steps.