The University of California, Santa Barbara Library is the university library system of the University of California, Santa BarbarainSanta Barbara, California. The library includes four facilities: two libraries (the main Davidson Library and the music library) and two annexes (Annex I and Annex II).[1] The library has some three million print volumes, 30,000 electronic journals, 34,450 e-books, 900,055 digitized items, five million cartographic items (including some 467,000 maps and 3.2million satellite and aerial images), more than 3.7million pieces of microform, 167,500 sound recordings, and 4,100 manuscripts. The library states that it holds 3.2 miles (5.1 km) of manuscript and archival collections.[2][3]
The library serves UC Santa Barbara's students, faculty, and staff. The library is also open to the public, but to borrow materials, individuals not affiliated with the university must purchase a UCSB library card for $100 for one year. However, members of UCSB affiliates may join for a reduced fee, and students and faculty at other University of California campuses, public school teachers, and faculty from reciprocating libraries may also obtain borrowing privileges with no charge, subject to verification. Members of the UC Alumni Association may obtain a courtesy library card, which provides borrowing access, but not access to licensed databases or interlibrary loan, or the ability to check out journals.[4]
The main library has eight floors, with the Pacific View Room on the eighth floor offering a view of the Pacific Ocean.[1][3][5]
Kristin Antelman was named university librarian in 2018.
The UCSB Library underwent a major construction project between 2013 and 2016.[6][7] The project included three parts: a building addition on the north side of UCSB Library, a renovation of the two-story section of UCSB Library, and seismic and code upgrades throughout the existing buildings. The new and renovated facility added 60,000 square feet (5,600 m2) of new space and renovated 90,000 square feet (8,400 m2) more, including a 20% increase in study space, a 24-hour learning commons, a new home for the Art & Architecture Collection, a state-of-the-art Special Research Collections facility, the Interdisciplinary Research Collaboratory, and bookable group study rooms. The project was certified LEED Gold.[8] The $80million project was funded by a State of Californiabond sale.[9]
The main library holds the general collection and several special collections: the Sciences and Engineering Collection, the Map and Imagery Laboratory, Curriculum Resources, the East Asian Collection, the Art & Architecture Collection, and the Ethnic and Gender Studies Collection. The Department of Special Research Collections is also part of the main library. Special Research Collections hold rare books and manuscripts and several collections, which include the Performing Arts Collection, the Wyles Collection on the American West, the Skofield Printers' Collection, and the California Ethnic and Multicultural Archives.[3]
The East Asian Collection was created in 1967 and is housed in the fifth floor of the main library. The East Asian Collection includes around 163,700 volumes of Chinese, Japanese, and Korean-language materials. The bulk of the collection is Chinese (60 percent) and Japanese (39 percent); the library began to acquire Korean works in 1992 when the university began its Korean program, and now has a few hundred titles in Korean.[10]
The Department of Special Research Collections acquires, preserves, and makes accessible rare, valuable, or unique materials which support UCSB students, faculty, and research programs, as well as the scholarly community. The department's holdings are non-circulating but are available for research in the reading room. Special Research Collections includes many smaller units, including the following.
Performing Arts Collection, including recordings, manuscripts, photographs, and other items involving the performing arts. Highlights include the papers of Bernard Herrmann, Lotte Lehmann, Judith Anderson, and Peter Racine Fricker. The collection also includes the Raymond Toole-Stott Circus Collection, which contains some 1,300 monographs on the circus in Europe and America. The Lobero Theatre Papers, also in the Performing Arts Collection, hold the organizational records of the Lobero Theatre, the oldest theater in Southern California.[15][16]
A collection of bibles dating as early as the mid-13th century, many of which are illuminated manuscripts. The earliest original items in the collection include copies of the Santa Barbara Bible (c. 1250), Biblia Latina (c. 1297), Biblia sacra Latina (1350); A Noble Fragment (aleaf of the Gutenberg Bible, c. 1450–1455) and the Coverdale Bible (1535). The library also holds bible manuscripts as part of the Isaac Foot Collection.[12]
A collection of more than 600 vernacular wax cylinder recordings, many of them from a collection amassed by Donald R. Hill, and later by sound historian David Giovannoni, who donated the collection to UCSB in 2013.[17] The Library of Congress added this collection to the National Recording Registry in March 2015.[18]
