From the Director
What does Bancroft collect?
More specifically, what should Bancroft be collecting now to serve the research needs of scholars and students of the 21st century, say, in 2097?
That is the question that faced Hubert Howe Bancroft 100 years ago, in 1897. He answered it with remarkable prescience. That is also the question that Bancroft staff and I sat down to ponder almost a year ago in order to come up with an updated version of Bancroft’s collection policy. We came up with two guiding principles: (1) build on strength and (2) talk to our users.
The first is a cliché. In special collections libraries like Bancroft, it simply makes sense to go for depth rather than breadth. Of course, in the case of Bancroft, we have both.
The second principle also makes sense, but is possibly honored more in the breach than the observance. But for us, it is crucial. Bancroft curatorial staff cannot be experts in all the areas in which Bancroft collects. As a matter of course, we consult with faculty on the acquisition of major items or collections.
This past spring we consulted with a broad range of faculty to ascertain their collective sense of the challenges facing the various disciplines, the questions each discipline regards as important, and research directions over the next 10-15 years.
We organized these groups around existing collections or programs: California and the West (the Bancroft Collection); Mexico and Central America; classical, medieval, and Renaissance literary collections; modern literary collections; history of science and technology; history of the University of California; oral history; and the Mark Twain papers.
We expected to find interest among our traditional faculty users in History, History of Art, English, Classics, the foreign language and ethnic studies departments, but were gratified and slightly astonished to encounter concerned faculty in the Law School, the College of Environmental Design, the College of Natural Resources, and the departments of American Studies, Women’s Studies, Anthropology, Geography, Sociology, Political Science, Nutritional Sciences, Astronomy, Rhetoric, and Integrative Biology.
In fact, as a direct result of this process, Deputy Director Peter Hanff organized a freshman seminar on the history of technology with Jim Casey, Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Associate Dean of the College of Engineering. (See page 12 for the story.)
We also consulted faculty members and archivists from other institutions, including UC Santa Cruz, Cal State Hayward, Cal State San Francisco, the National Records and Archives Administration, the California State Archives, and the Oakland Museum. Finally, we sent over 6,000 questionnaires to members of scholarly societies, such as the Western Historical Association.
The discussions were fascinating. I think we all came away from them struck by the sheer intellectual vitality they demonstrated and the sparks that flew from gathering together scholars from different disciplines with differing interests and theoretical orientations.
Space does not permit a detailed summary of the areas on which Bancroft will direct its efforts, so let me focus on California and the American West.
The range of interests within this broad area was remarkable: grassroots social movements, business development, AAA maps, political campaign files, land use, environmental impact reports, biotechnology, affirmative action, religious cults, the Free Speech Movement, water use, gender issues, population growth, California as trend-setter, California cuisine, demographic changes.
Two major themes appeared: (1) the environment and (2) the astonishing social and demographic changes that have taken place in California over the last half century: the physical landscape, the social landscape, and their interaction. The next step is to translate the collection policy resulting from our discussions —over 100 pages long—into specific actions.
It is clear that we shall continue to focus on the environmental movement (the most heavily used collection in Bancroft are the Sierra Club papers), but also on other institutions and organizations, including businesses and corporations, whose activities, for good or for ill, affect the environment.
We shall build on our already strong Hispanic-American, Chinese-American, and Japanese-American collections by gathering materials on the new communities that have come into existence more recently, such as the South and Southeast Asian communities. The emphasis will be very much on contemporary California, just as Hubert Howe Bancroft collected materials about his California.
There isn’t money enough or time to gather in all the vast amounts of information touching upon each of the areas central to Bancroft’s and UC Berkeley’s interests, so a delicate balancing act is required. Not only must we decide which subject areas we will focus on, which we have now done; we also must decide what specific materials to collect in those areas.
What is available? How difficult will it be to process a particular collection or archive? How much will it cost to acquire and process? And always we circle back to the basic question: How valuable is it for research purposes, now and in the future?
It is a fascinating process and quite possibly the single most important thing we do at Bancroft.
Volume 112
Spring 1998
Table of Contents
DeFeo, Conner papers add to Bancroft’s Beat collection
From the Director: What does Bancroft collect?
The Digital Scriptorium
Towards a Renaissance in medieval manuscript studies
Robert Frost Collection includes photos inscribed by the poet
Bancroft Fellows research images of the American West, history of Mexico’s Cora Indians
Freshmen discover the wonders of Bancroft
Bancroft staffer in the spotlight
An Oral History of Jack Stauffacher From letterpress to computer-designed fine printing
Where is the last portrait of Mark Twain?
