[an error occurred while processing this directive]

What's new at the Library?

Fall brings a cornucopia of events and information resources to campus

2 October 2009

Don't forget!
The budget crisis means that most of Berkeley's libraries are now closed on Saturdays; Moffitt and the Gardner Stacks are the exceptions, as long as you have a Cal ID. Many libraries are open on Sundays. New hours

ONLINE RESOURCES

The Library expands its eclectic collection of online databases every month. Here are just a few of the latest additions. Look at a full list of what's available.

The Sixties

I have a dream button Who was the "eggman" in the Beatles' 1967 song "I Am the Walrus," anyway? That's what Samuel Beckett wanted to know when he sat down a few years later to talk with John Lennon, an interview captured in this archive of primary documents and personal narratives from America at a cultural and historic turning point. The Sixties contains 150,000 pages of oral histories that range widely through the civil-rights movement, the rise of student activism, the Vietnam war — and pop culture. (By the way, though the walrus was Paul, the eggman was Jerry, the egg-delivery man at Lennon's childhood home.).

Statistics covering just about everything in the world — 55 million data points in all — collected by the United Nations are here, plugged into a user-friendly format. The data are simple to search and sort, even for the Excel-phobic. Want to compare greenhouse-gas production in the United States to other countries, track HIV-infection rates, ascertain where the world's refugees are, or learn the percentage of girls in Afghani secondary schools (16 percent in 2004)? It's all here.

Asahi Kikuzo II

A bonanza for Japan scholars, this site — all in Japanese — presents 5.8 million articles in full text from several Japanese newspapers and magazines, plus a photo archive of some 10,000 images from the 1930s through 1945.

Digital Innovation South Africa

Among the primary sources — photos, music, oral histories, interviews — from South Africa's anti-apartheid struggle available on this site are proceedings from the 1964 conspiracy trial of Nelson Mandela.

The Online Archive of California (OAC)

A new look, advanced functionality, and lots more content — more than 30,000 new records — have been added to this site, which collects California's cultural and historical artifacts, held mainly in public and private libraries around the state.

EXHIBITS

On display at Berkeley libraries this fall; check lib.berkeley.edufor visiting hours.

Icons of a Border Installation: Photographic Search for Traces in Today's Berlin

Nov. 9 through Dec. 21, in 190 Doe (across from the Morrison Library).
The Berlin Wall fell 20 years ago, and since then everything about the city has been transformed. To recapture a sense of the past, 36 students went to the sites represented in historic photos and documented the present. Sponsored by the Goethe-Institute San Francisco.

Opening lecture (by associate professor of history John Connelly) and reception on Monday, Nov. 9, 5 to 7:30 p.m. in Morrison Library.

Environmental Design / A New Modernism

Through Dec. 22, in the Environmental Design Library, on the 2nd floor of Wurster Hall.
This multimedia exhibit, celebrating the 50th anniversary of the College of Environmental Design (CED), focuses on key moments in the evolution of the founders' vision, especially the idea that social and natural sciences should inform teaching, research, and practice. For hours: lib.berkeley.edu/ENVI

Darwin and the Evolution of a Theory

Through Dec. 23, in the Bancroft Library Gallery.
Berkeley's year-long Darwin-fest continues with this exhibition of rare books, manuscripts, images, scientific specimens, and other materials commemorating the 200th anniversary of Charles Darwin's birth and the 150th anniversary of the publication of On the Origin of Species.

Development of Written Language in the Ancient Near East

Through February 2010, in the Bernice Layne Brown Gallery,
Doe Library.
This exhibit focuses on the two writing systems that originated around 3000 B.C. and developed in the Ancient Near East: cuneiform and hieroglyphics.

Amazing Gate: Rescuing a Campus Icon

Through Oct. 23, in Doe Library, Rowell Cases, 2nd floor.
Back from the brink of destruction by rust and corrosion, century-old Sather Gate has been restored. On display are pieces of the original gate, plus panels telling the story of the eight nudes featured on its controversial bas-reliefs.

INFORMATION

OskiCat

OskiCat The library's new catalog, OskiCat makes searching for books and journals in Berkeley's libraries faster, easier, and more comprehensive. It combines the functions of Pathfinder and GLADIS with new features. You can find items from more campus libraries, limit results to preferred libraries, limit searches in new ways, find course reserves, renew books, request items, check the status of holds and recalls, and save searches to run later.

Facebook

Several campus libraries — including Environmental Design, Physics-Astronomy, Mathematics Statistics, Public Health, Media Resources, Optometry and Health Sciences, Doe, and Moffitt — have updated pages on Facebook.