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Online Exhibits
Click on the banner to enter the online exhibit. This exhibit furthers The Bancroft Library's goal to make accessible to wider audiences the rich history of California. It is designed to give an introduction to the history of Italian immigrants and their descendants in the state of California, which began while still under Spanish control. This online exhibition highlights people, industries, and neighborhoods that were vital in the creation of California, and their change over time, reflecting the overall change in California at large.
Click on the banner to enter the online exhibit. This exhibit tells the story of the key individuals and events driving the establishment of an academic program in 1901 that within a few decades achieved worldwide stature. Based on the exhibition The Foundations of Anthropology in California, 1901-1960, held in the Bancroft Library Gallery in 2002, this online exhibit draws on the extensive collection of records, documents, and images held by The Bancroft Library including departmental records and faculty papers. A few items have been lent by other institutions, most notably several audio and video clips provided by the Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology.
Click on the banner to enter the online exhibit. In August 1617 a small group of Saxon nobles gathered in Castle Hornstein near Weimar to establish a type of institution previously unknown on German soil, the literary society. The new German society was called the Fruchtbringende Gesellschaft, the Fruitbearing Society, and its motto was "Alles zum Nützen" -- "Everything for a purpose." The society saw its principal role in the elaboration of language standards for the vernacular, including spelling and grammatical norms but also tending against the use of foreign words and phrases. It also promoted the use of German as a literary and scholarly language by the attention it focused on important new works of German scholarship and literature, and by its active role in publishing these works through most of the 17th century. The Bancroft's Fruchtbringende Gesellschaft Collection contains over 1,600 books, manuscripts and pictorial items, mostly from the 17th century, which document the activities of Germany's first literary society. This digital exhibit showcases many of the copperplate engravings that are found within the collection.
Click on the banner to enter the online exhibit. This exhibit showcases more than 100 images (and accompanying text) of documents, correspondence, photographs, and published materials drawn from Bancroft's extensive history of science collections of books, faculty papers, and departmental records. This online exhibit is a virtual representation of the Bancroft Gallery exhibition of the same name that was held in 2004, and includes additional digitized full text and multimedia relating to J. Robert Oppenheimer and the Manhattan Project.
Click on the banner to enter the online exhibit. On April 18, 1906, San Francisco was wrecked by a powerful earthquake and for the next few days was consumed by fires that destroyed a large portion of the city. Damage from the earthquake was widespread, occurring for hundreds of miles along the extensive fault line. As San Francisco was then the West Coast's most populous city and its leading economic and cultural center, the repercussions of the earthquake and fire throughout the region were tremendous. Created for the 100th anniversary of this disaster, the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake and Fire Digital Collection includes an online exhibit, the ability to search and browse the collections, an interactive map of the city of San Francisco, and the presentation of a 360-degree panoramic view of the ruined city. A list of resources for further study is also provided. Some 14,000 digital images and 7,000 pages of text documents from various libraries and archives throughout the state have been prepared for this digital collection.
Click on the banner to enter the online exhibit. From time untold, grizzlies thrived on the rich oak savannas and coastal slopes of California, in a respectful coexistence with the resident Native Americans. Beginning in 1769 when the first California Grizzly was killed with a bullet from a blunderbuss near Los Osos, and concluding in 1922, when a Fresno County rancher shot the last known grizzly in the state, Californians chronicled the death of this once dominant animal. The grizzly is forever silenced, but this exhibit proves the axiom that "everyone has a bear story." Here is the brief history of the California Grizzly through the eyes and voices of the narrators of its demise; the story of the eradication of a species and its reinvention as the proud and ubiquitous emblem of our state. This virtual exhibit offers digital reproductions of rare and unique materials on display at The Bancroft Library in 2002. In addition to more than one hundred and fifty digital images and related texts, the online exhibit includes links to online resources about the California Grizzly Bear as well as a digital reproduction of "A Walking Tour of the Berkeley Bears," a campus map of bear statues and artwork found throughout the university's grounds.
Click on the banner to enter the online exhibit. This online exhibit looks at four key events and celebrations in California during the last 150 years of statehood and examines a few aspects of California's unique development, noting accomplishments as well as a few missteps. The exhibit begins with the Constitutional Convention and California's campaign for statehood in 1850; then looks at two grand world's fairs: The Panama-Pacific International Exposition of 1915 and The Golden Gate International Exposition of 1939; and ends with the celebration of California First Days, 1962-63, when California overtook New York as the most populous state in the Union. California has been perceived by many as the embodiment of "progress," a place that not only looks towards the future but also shapes it.
Click on the banner to enter the online exhibit. This exhibit presents the documentary history of The Bancroft Library at the University of California, Berkeley, tracing the library's development from its beginnings as the personal collection of businessman and historian Hubert Howe Bancroft to its current role as one of the premiere archival and special collections repositories in the nation. Documents, photographs, illustrations, and other materials offer an introduction to more than one hundred and fifty years in the life of The Bancroft Library.
Click on the banner to enter the online exhibit. The year 1899 pushed the University of California into the twentieth century in more ways than just on the calendar: it laid the groundwork for the campus we recognize today, physically as well as academically. The exhibit focuses especially on two events of 1899 that brought about a major change: the arrival of Benjamin Ide Wheeler as president and the completion of the Phoebe Hearst Architectural Competition for the University of California. This online exhibit is based on an exhibition displayed at Doe Library in 1999.
Click on the banner to enter the online exhibit. This online exhibit is a digital companion to an exhibition of rare books, photographs, illustrations, and other archival and manuscript materials that debuted in 2000 to celebrate the acquisition of the University of California, Berkeley Library's nine millionth volume. Presenting a selection of visual materials relating to Native Americans, the panorama of images selected includes illustrations from rare books, pamphlets, journals, pulp magazines, newspapers, and ephemera in addition to selections of original photographs, including stereographs, lantern slides, and cyanotypes. The diverse scholarly treasures represented in this exhibition include materials that reflect European interpretations of Native Americans, scientific and anthropological research, United States military surveys, images of popular culture, literary and political observations, and artistic representations. This digital exhibit offers several enhancements, including additional images and text, a timeline to facilitate the viewing of materials in a chronological sequence, and a checklist of exhibit items.
Click on the banner to enter the online exhibit. 1998 marked the 25th anniversary of the development of recombinant DNA by Stanley N. Cohen of Stanford University and Herbert W. Boyer of the University of California, San Francisco. This invention made it possible to recombine and clone DNA, thus providing basic scientists with a simple and precise method for studying the structure and function of genes of higher and lower organisms. Recombinant DNA technology, as it came to be known, also became a foundation of the biotechnology industry now flourishing in the Bay Area and around the world. The Bioscience and Biotechnology in History exhibit celebrates this discovery and suggests its broad implications for science, society, and industry. It also provides a glimpse of bioscience research and discovery at Berkeley preceding the recombinant DNA revolution, as documented in the archives and oral histories of four prominent scientists: Karl Meyer, Melvin Calvin, Wendell Stanley, and Gunther Stent.
Click on the banner to enter the online exhibit. This exhibit includes books, documents, architectural drawings and renderings, blueprints, artifacts, maps, and photographs. The bridges documented include the Golden Gate Bridge, the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge, the Carquinez Bridge, the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge, the Antioch Bridge, and the Dumbarton Bridge. The exhibit also contains documents detailing Bay Area bridge projects that were seriously considered, but were never built.
Click on the banner to enter the online exhibit. The professional careers of the Lehmer Family have been intimately tied to the University of California at Berkeley for a century. Derrick Norman Lehmer joined the mathematics faculty at Berkeley in 1900, and later served as Chair of the Department. Son Derrick Henry (Dick, as he was known to friends and family) received a bachelor's degree in Physics at Berkeley, and later continued the Berkeley tradition of the family as professor and Chair of the Mathematics Department. Emma Trotskaia received her B.A. degree in Mathematics from Berkeley with honors in 1928, and met her future husband through his father, her employer in the Mathematics Department. Through the years, the Lehmers individually made fundamental contributions in many areas of mathematics. In addition many of their contributions, for instance in the areas of number theory, computational mathematics, and Fermat's Last Theorem, were the result of close, collaborative efforts among the them. The Lehmers helped to bring mathematics from pen on paper into the computer era through a series of machines they designed to automatically compute prime numbers. The mechanisms ranged from an early version utilizing a bicycle chain, then electricity, and they later harnessed a computer discarded by the University. Automation enabled calculations far beyond what had been possible before. The lives of the three Lehmers are richly documented in the collections of the History of Science and Technology Program at The Bancroft Library, and papers of Lehmer family members. This online exhibit is based upon the exhibition originally displayed at The Lehmer Conference held by the UCB Department of Mathematics in 2000.
Click on the banner to enter the online exhibit. In the late 1890s, a focus of special pride was the growing state university in Berkeley. Organized in 1868 as a land-grant institution, it now sought greater stature to match its promise. A stronger faculty and better administration, a more impressive physical presence, and an international reputation were the Regents' agenda. These aspirations led in many directions, including the international competition held in 1898-99 to determine a master plan for the buildings and setting of the University of California. This ambitious turn-of-the-century exercise was the idea of a recently hired instructor of mechanical drawing, the architect Bernard Maybeck. Its major advocate and co-organizer, Jacob Reinstein - San Francisco lawyer who had graduated in the University's initial class - was a member of the Board of Regents. The patron who made the whole campaign possible with a generous gift in 1896 was the mining and real estate heiress, Phoebe Apperson Hearst, who would become the University's greatest early benefactor. To build this online exhibit, a selection of items were scanned or photographed on site from the original exhibition displayed at the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive in 2000.
Click on the banner to enter the online exhibit. In 1853, at the age of seventeen, Samuel Langhorne Clemens left his home in Hannibal, Missouri, for his first extended trip. Over the next fifty-seven years he crisscrossed the globe, at first working as an itinerant typesetter in several major eastern cities, then as a steamboat pilot on the Mississippi River, and later as a prospector and newspaper reporter on the American frontier, where he first used the pseudonym "Mark Twain." He visited five continents, steamed across the Atlantic twenty-nine times, and crossed the Pacific and Indian oceans as part of one complete round-the-world circuit. Clemens's lifelong habit of travel left both literary and documentary remains: correspondence with people throughout the world, notebooks, lecture texts, hotel bills, invitations, newspaper clippings, mementos, photographs both posed and candid, and unpublished manuscripts, as well as the familiar travel books and articles. This online exhibit showcases many digital reproductions of these treasures. |
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