The University Archives serves as the official repository for all permanently valuable records of the University of California, Santa Barbara, to preserve our institutional memory.  In order to do so, the Archives focuses on collecting in three major aspects of University life: the administration, teaching and research, and student and community life.  The archives are intended to support UC’s commitment to instruction, research, and public service.
Faculty papers contain significant information on teaching, research, and professional and administrative activities, areas through which researchers can gain a valuable perspective on the intellectual vitality of the university community. They can be rich resources of university history, in addition to documenting the careers of individuals. Each UC campus collects faculty papers selectively and administers them either as university archives or as manuscript collections. Ideally, faculty paper collections should be housed at a single repository.

Collecting Priorities

The UCSB Archives acquire faculty papers selectively while also striving to document the diversity of faculty members’ backgrounds, perspectives, and research interests. For determining the significance of a faculty member’s body of work, the following criteria are applied:

Notability

Is the individual known internationally or nationally for any of the following:

  • participant in/eyewitness to or commentator on major historical event
  • recipient of significant awards [e.g. Field Medal, Nobel, Lasker, Pritzker, Wolf, Kyoto, Pulitzer, Guggenheim, MacArthur, etc.]
  • established new area of research
  • appointment to cabinet-level office [federal]
  • appointment to significant national or international organization [e.g. National Academy of Sciences]
  • designation as “fellow” within relevant professional society
  • top honor (medal, prize) within relevant professional society
  • significant patents/inventions

Is the individual important to the history of the region of California or the western United States, or a local area, for any of the following:

  • participant in/eyewitness to or commentator on a major historical event
  • appointment to/service within significant state/county/municipal office/organizationIs the individual’s role in the history of UC and the campus one or more of the following:
  • participant in/eyewitness to or commentator on a major historical event
  • UC Presidential Chair [faculty designation]
  • emeritus/emerita status
  • first to teach subject on campus
  • established new curriculum, department, or program on campus
  • significant service within campus [department chair, provost, dean]

Other

Indicators that an individual’s body of work is significant:

  • recipient of significant research grants

Additional considerations

  • intellectual content
  • comprehensive collecting in subject already established/being established on campus
  • faculty member has completed an oral history interview
  • master reprint file publications not available (nationally, internationally)

Materials Collected

  • correspondence
  • social media communications
  • grant proposals and reports
  • drafts of significant publications
  • administrative records of department chairs, and institute and center directors
  • records of committees that the faculty member chaired
  • policy documents
  • speeches and lectures
  • course syllabi
  • pictorial images, including photographs, slides, illustrations
  • audiovisual recordings
  • research notes and data
  • biographical materials
  • oral histories

Materials Generally Not Collected

  • student records
  • patient files
  • reprints and pre-prints
  • equipment and software instructions
  • duplicative or redundant material
  • artifacts, objects, plaques
  • peer-review files for journals and publications
  • federal records that fall under the purview of the US National Archives and Records Administration (NARA)

University Archivist

Matt Stahl
mstahl@ucsb.edu