Tag Archives: Bancroft Library
Author mines the riches of the Bancroft Library
As public services coordinator for the past 20 years, Snyder has spent countless hours scouring the stacks to retrieve material for patrons. She has helped researchers locate obscure letters, tracked down elusive photographs, and occasionally stumbled upon artifacts that had largely been forgotten.
The deep knowledge of the library that has more than 650,000 books, 35,000 linear feet of archival documents and 8 million photographs linear inspired Snyder to do her own history projects. In the past few years, she has written or co-authored a number of books that highlight some of the more whimsical and fun parts of the Bancroft and provide a glimpse into the lives of ordinary people. There was the book Bear in Mind, on all the grizzly bear images and the one about camping, cleverly called Past Tents. (You can see she has a knack for titles, too.) … Continue reading »
The night Pablo Picasso heard the UC Berkeley fight song
In 1908, a Jewish woman from San Francisco named Harriet Lane Levy was invited to a supper in Montmartre to honor the painter Henri Rousseau. This was no ordinary supper: its hosts were the painter Pablo Picasso and his lover, Fernande Olivier.
Levy was well acquainted with the artists, painters, poets, and writers who lived in Paris in the first decades of the 20th century and came to be known as The Lost Generation. In 1907, she and her neighbor, Alice B. Toklas, left San Francisco to visit Paris. On their first day there they went to see a good friend, Sarah Samuels, who had married Michael Stein. In the room was Michael’s sister, Gertrude Stein. The love match between Stein and Toklas is one of the most famous couplings in history. … Continue reading »
A Berkeley celebration of Mark Twain
Since the esteemed humorist died 100 years ago and couldn’t read from his own text, other authors, poets, actors, and filmmakers did the honors.
Under a carved wooden ceiling in the Heyns Reading Room of Doe Library, Michael Chabon, Maxine Hong Kingston, Rita Moreno, Mary Roach, Robert Haas, Bob … Continue reading »
Magnes collections get new downtown Berkeley home
Construction on a new facility to hold the Magnes Collection of Jewish Art and Life at the Bancroft Library will start in a week.
UC Berkeley held a groundbreaking ceremony Tuesday night for the collection, which will be housed in a building at 2121 Allston Way, near Oxford Street. UC President Mark Yudof, UC Berkeley Chancellor Robert Birgeneau, and members of the Jewish community who supported the collection’s predecessor organization, the Judah L. Magnes Museum, were at the celebration.
Many of the speakers compared UC Berkeley’s acquisition of the Magnes Museum to a marriage.
Warren Hellman, a San Francisco businessman, who along with Tad Taube and the Koret Foundation, financed the university’s acquisition of the museum, sang a song about the merger. The tune’s lyrics were based on Woody Guthrie’s “Bound for Glory,” and the chorus refrain was “The Magnes is Bound for Glory at Last.” Hellman played the banjo. Other members of the band included Ron Hendel, the chair of Berkeley’s Jewish Studies Program, Francesco Spagnolo, the Magnes Curator of Collections, Sharon Bernstein, the cantor at Congregation Sha’ar Zahav in San Francisco, and Colleen Browne, a member of The Wronglers, Hellman’s band.
Hendel of the Jewish Studies program crafted a humorous limerick about the Magnes’s wanderings, which he recited Tuesday night. (Hint: shiddich means Jewish marriage.)
There was a museum named Magnes
That decided to seek a new address.
It tried out the city,
The result wasn’t pretty,
But the shiddich with Cal is a success.
Director of Bancroft Library to retire
Charles Faulhaber, who recently oversaw the $64 million renovation of the Bancroft Library, announced this week that he will retire from his post in June 2011.
Faulhaber, 68, will have spent 42 years on the UC Berkeley campus by that time – the last 16 as director of the Bancroft. It’s time to move on, he said.
“I’ve got the best job on the Berkeley campus,” said Faulhaber, who is also a professor of medieval Spanish literature. “It’s pure joy.”
Faulhaber was appointed the James D. Hart Director of the Bancroft Library in 1995 and not only oversaw – and raised money for – the library’s renovation, but helped usher in a new digital era for the Bancroft.
Browsers on the library’s website can find lectures on California history, see an online exhibit of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and fire, find out about diverse California cultures, learn about the history of the disability rights movement, as well as other social movements.
They can scan manuscripts in the Digital Scriptorium, which features illuminated manuscripts from the 8th to 15th centuries. They can buy reproductions of some of the library’s prized posters and photographs. There is even a Bancroft Facebook page which presents a “digital object of the day.”
Faulhaber also raised funds for three of the library’s most visible collections: The Mark Twain Papers, The Center for Tebtunis Papyri, and the Regional Oral History Project.
The Bancroft and UC Press will publish Twain’s autobiography in November, and its release has attracted national attention. The book was the subject of a Newsweek cover story last week and was featured on “60 Minutes.”
The Mark Twain Project’s acquisition of a an original Twain manuscript at auction in July drew much less notice, but is an illustration of how important fundraising – one of Faulhaber’s main responsibilities – is to the Bancroft Library. The project spent $249,500 to acquire “A Family Sketch,” Samuel Clemens’ 64-page, unpublished tribute to his daughter, Olivia “Susy” Clemens, who died of spinal meningitis at the age of 24.
Newsweek jumps on Twain bandwagon
America’s irreverent literary sweetheart Mark Twain graced the cover of Newsweek magazine Monday, adding to a flurry of press hype surrounding the publication of his uncensored autobiography this fall.
The Newsweek article, which includes a never-before-published excerpt, is not the first to add to the anticipation of the release. Last month, The New York Times ran an article on Twain’s political pointedness in the manuscript, while the London newspaper The Independent published a steamy piece in June (We wrote about it in May).
The … Continue reading »
Mark Twain’s true thoughts will soon be revealed
When Mark Twain died in 1910, he asked that his autobiographical writings not be released for 100 years.
Twain, who had become one of America’s most celebrated humorists, apparently had a lot of nasty things to say about the world. He spent the last six months of his life writing those thoughts down.
Some of those jottings included observations about Isabel Van Kleek Lyon, who became his secretary after the death of his wife Olivia in 1904. Twain … Continue reading »
Bancroft Library takes in William Saroyan gift
UC Berkeley’s Bancroft Library has received a gift of hundreds of books, drawings, correspondence and other personal communications to and from one of America’s best-known writers, the Armenian-American author and playwright William Saroyan.
The collection was assembled by Saroyan’s niece, Jacqueline Kazarian, who is also the founder of William Saroyan Literary Foundation International.
“UC Berkeley is such an incredible place of learning and growing and intellectual exploration,” said Kazarian, who earned degrees in communication and decorative arts … Continue reading »
Future uncertain for Berkeley’s Serendipity Books
Peter B. Howard, the owner of Serendipity Books, has been collecting antique tomes for 47 years and the results of his diligence can be seen in the stacks and stacks of books at his store on University Avenue.
A world-renowned book collector who has rescued a number of valuable archives from the Berkeley city dump and gotten them preserved at university libraries, Howard estimates that he owns one million books. Half are crammed into his store, where the piles of books make it tough to move around, and half are stored in his warehouse.
But all that is about to change.
Howard was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer this year and he knows his time – and that of Serendipity Books — is short. He is trying to sell his massive collection, as well as his business, but does not think it will be easy. He predicts that the store will probably close upon his death.
“There’s nothing to say,” Howard said by telephone. “People die. We all die. Businesses end.”
Howard has long been famous for his blunt talk. That, and the quality of his collection, which contains many first editions and rare books.
Ian Jackson, an old friend and fellow antiquarian book dealer, has served as an unofficial interpreter of Howard to the world. He even wrote two books about the store and its owner, one titled, The Key to Serendipity: How to Buy Books in Spite of Peter Howard. (I think the double entendre is intended.)
In an epigraph to that book, Jackson repeats a conversation he overheard at Serendipity:
Puzzled Customer: “Is there any rhyme or reason to this place?”
Peter B. Howard: “Yes! My rhyme! My reason!”
Howard’s collection is huge and covers many areas, including California history and western Americana. He is known for his collection of first editions of American and British literature, and has holdings of Ernest Hemingway, Henry James, Shakespeare, North Point Press, and fiction from countries around the world, according to an interview Nicholas Basbanes published in his 2001 book, Patience and Fortitude: Wherein a Colorful Cast of Determined Book Collectors, Dealers, and Librarians Go About the Quixotic Task of Preserving a Legacy. Serendipity also has large collections of literary manuscripts, screenplays and little magazines. … Continue reading »
Spring road trip, when car springs really mattered
One of my favorite daily treats is the Bancroft Library’s Digital Object of the Day, which can be found on their Facebook page or by following them on Twitter at @bancroftlibrary.
In honor of spring, which arrives Sunday, the Bancroft has sent out a photo of an early version of a spring road trip. This photo was taken in in Calico, a silver mining town on King Mountain not too far from Barstow. Today it is a ghost … Continue reading »
by Email