More News February 02, 2018

Talking with the presenters of Footsteps to You: Chattel Slavery, the visiting exhibition currently in the UC Riverside Special Collections department, revealed some noteworthy facts about Black History and the City of Riverside.

Riverside had many interesting connections to Black history at the turn of the last century, according to Dr. Paulette Brown-Hinds, Publisher of The Black Voice News and Steward of the Gore Collection for the Black Voice Foundation, which was responsible for bringing the exhibition to the UCR Library. One of the most intriguing was the friendship between the American educator, author, and US presidential advisor Booker T. Washington and the Mission Inn’s founder Frank Miller.

Miller grew up in an environment sympathetic to the anti-slavery movement, Brown-Hinds explained. Frank Miller’s parents Christopher Columbus Miller and Maryanne Miller attended Oberlin College and lived in Oberlin, Ohio, a town known for its strong stance and equally aggressive actions against the peculiar institution of slavery. The Millers relocated to Riverside and founded a tavern that Frank eventually grew into the Historic Mission Inn Hotel and Spa.

“During our Footsteps to Freedom Underground Railroad study tour, we annually travel to Oberlin and that’s how we learned about Frank Miller’s connection to abolitionist activity,” added Hardy Brown II, chairman of the Black Voice Foundation. “We’ve always been aware of Booker T. Washington’s connection to Frank Miller, but didn’t realize Miller’s early influences in the cause of African-American freedom.”

Washington visited Miller at the Mission Inn in March 1914, and he also gave several presentations at various locations in the City of Riverside during his stay.

“Our mother former Assemblymember Cheryl Brown was friends with Washington’s granddaughter Edith, and she introduced us to other members of her family including Kenneth Morris, who is also a direct descendant of abolitionist and statesman Frederick Douglass,” Brown commented. “Kenny is now a docent on our tour.”

In 2004 the Brown family spearheaded the effort to raise money to commission the bust of Washington that was unveiled at the Mission Inn. “We wanted to commemorate their friendship and the spirit of cooperation it represented,” Dr. Brown-Hinds said.

Dr. Brown-Hinds believes that the connection between Miller and Washington was strengthened by coming from a community like Oberlin. “Christopher Columbus Miller was very much influenced by the president of the college at the time,” she said. “He was very progressive in his thinking when it came to slavery.”

These unique connections to local history and to Black history are just two among the many reasons for the UCR community to visit the exhibition in Special Collections & University Archives on the fourth floor of Tomás Rivera Library. “Each one of these pieces are ones that people would not see at a normal Black History program,” said Brown.

To enrich the experience of visiting the exhibition, Brown plans to bring in different speakers on the events and history surrounding the abolitionist period, which are represented in many of the exhibition’s primary sources. Information about the speakers and the event schedule are available by request.

Additionally, Brown plans to be on-site when local schools bring their students for scheduled tours of the exhibition, to answer questions about the items featured. He has also created interactive display cards with QR codes throughout the exhibition to provide a more dynamic experience for unscheduled visitors.

Footsteps to You: Chattel Slavery, focuses on highlights of Underground Railroad materials from the private collection of Jerry Gore, which has been entrusted to the Black Voice Foundation. The exhibition is available for viewing in the UC Riverside Special Collections Department on the fourth floor of Tomás Rivera Library on weekdays from 11:00 am until 4:00 pm until Friday, March 30. Those interested in scheduling a guided tour of the exhibition should contact Hardy Brown II by email at Hardy@bvfoundation.org or by calling (909) 682-7070.

More News March 22, 2017

One year ago, 99.57% of California exhibited “abnormally dry” conditions, and 55.31% of the state had “extreme drought” intensity.

Today, those numbers have fallen to 23.46% and 0%, respectively.

While California’s drought statistics have improved temporarily due to increased precipitation this past year, water conditions in other parts of the world still have a long way to go.

March 22, 2017 marks the 24th annual World Water Day, and the 2017 campaign focus is, “Why wastewater?”

“With over 80% of the world’s wastewater flowing back into the water cycle without treatment, World Water Day serves as a reminder of the importance of working together as a global community to protect and preserve our critical aquatic resources,” said Kent LaCombe, UCR Library’s Water Resources Librarian.

According to the World Water Day fact sheet, proper management of waste water can help to create an “affordable and sustainable source of water, energy, nutrients, and other recoverable materials.”

It stands to reason that the less we waste, the more we can save. Here are 5 simple ways that UC Riverside students, staff and faculty can help to conserve and reuse water on a daily basis:

• Use water from boiling pasta to nourish your plants (after it has cooled).
• Turn off the tap when brushing your teeth and washing your hands.
• Use a bucket to collect water while your shower warms up. Use what you collect as your pets’ drinking water or to water plants.
• Take shorter showers or “camping showers.” (Get wet, turn off water, shampoo / lather up, then turn water back on to rinse off.)
• Landscape yards with succulents or drought-tolerant plants instead of grass – or even better, make a rock garden.

Coordinated by UN-Water in collaboration with governments and partners, World Water Day was designated by the United Nations General Assembly to serve as an annual reminder for the global community to work toward a collective solution for the water crisis.

World Water Day launched Sustainable Development Goals in 2015, aiming to ensure every global citizen has access to safe water by the year 2030. They have designated water as a primary issue in the effort to eliminate extreme poverty.

California’s drought situation may have improved temporarily, and Flint, Michigan recently received a substantial award from the Environmental Protection Agency to upgrade infrastructure to combat its toxic water supply. Yet recent reports of contaminated water supplies in San Deigo county shed light on just now timely the 2017 theme of World Water Day truly is. With increased demand on the drinking water supply as more and more populations move into cities, according to World Water Day statistics, increased action will be critical to maintain access to clean water.

To learn more about how you can make a difference, please visit worldwaterday.org.

In addition, the Water Resource Collection and Archives available online through Calisphere can be another great source to guide your research, study, and activism.

More News April 10, 2020

Despite the closure of the physical campus buildings, the UCR Library staff remain ready to support UC Riverside students, faculty, and researchers during our first-ever all virtual quarter.

What does this mean for you?

The majority of  library services such as Interlibrary Loan (ILL), course reserves, teaching and research support,, workshops, consultations, and other public services are now functioning under a remote operating model.

Here is a list of patron services available:

Accessing resources: Books, Journals, and Databases

• ​Answering patron questions. Email Access Services questions to Library_circulation@ucr.edu.
• Text a librarian is another way to reach out, but is best reserved for brief questions. Text 66746 and start message with "ucrlib".
• Assisting Faculty with iLearn requests for Course Reserves.
• Electronic delivery of Interlibrary Loan (ILL) materials, though some requests are taking longer than usual.
• Uploading existing digitized film resources to the library’s streaming media site.
• Working to find alternate online versions of requested films not currently on our streaming media site.
• Renewing / extending due dates for all materials currently on loan until campus reopens (except ILL, but library staff is requesting renewals).
• Book drops are monitored daily, but materials will not be checked back in until campus reopens.
• Unless your library card is expiring soon, patrons need not worry about late notices for overdue materials.
• Recalls are postponed until the physical library facilities reopen.
• Paging requests are not available until campus reopens.
• Scholarly resources purchasing, with an emphasis on online resources and e-books with unlimited simultaneous user licenses (when available), to support remote instruction and learning.​
• Assistance with finding streaming media options for film screenings and instruction.
• Support finding alternative books to support instruction and research needs.
• Electronic database and journal access support.
• For assistance contact your Collection Strategist.

Remote Instructional Support

• Creating a series of brief video tutorials for library patrons.
• Providing asynchronous or synchronous library sessions for courses.
• Virtual office hours for courses that have research assignments.
• Conducting reference via Zoom, email, or 24/7 chat.
• Developing stand-alone modules that can connect to iLearn.
• Collaboratively on designing assignments and assessments for remote learners.
• Consulting on resources for classes.
• Working individually with course instructors on designing a specific support method for their class.

Faculty interested in any Teaching and Learning services should fill out this instruction request form.

Remote Research Support

• Librarians continue to hold consultations. To request one, visit our Ask a Librarian page.
• Spring quarter workshops will be hosted online.
• Available to provide support for iLearn, in conjunction with Teaching and Learning staff and XCITE.
• Virtual Special Collections office hours on Tuesdays, 2 - 3 p.m. and Thursdays, 11 a.m. to 12 p.m.
• Collaborations with faculty on remote instruction using digitized resources.
• Online workshops on digital archival resources for students.
• Processing and delivering reproduction requests for existing tiffs.
• Archiving the University's response to COVID19.
• Creating informational guides supporting needs for University Archives and historic information.

While not all user-facing, the remaining library departments are hard at work behind-the-scenes to support the remote patron service model.

Now more than ever, philanthropic support is critical as UC Riverside transitions to online-only instruction and research platforms. The UCR Library deeply appreciates the gifts we have received so far in University Advancement’s Support Students Impacted by COVID-19 campaign. If you are able to make a gift of any amount to the Library Student Success Fund, our staff and the students of UCR would be most grateful.

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More News February 01, 2024

Learn about some of the authors featured in the UCR Library's Writers Week exhibit. View the exhibit in the Tomás Rivera Library until February 16. 

This year's Writers Week is taking place February 10 and February 12 - 16. See all the events (most are hybrid) and RSVP at writersweek.ucr.edu. 

Learn more about our Writers Week exhibit here and more about the authors featured below. 

Prageeta Sharma is a poet born in Framingham, Massachusetts. Her collections of poetry include Bliss to Fill, The Opening Question, which won the Fence Modern Poets Prize, Infamous Landscapes, Undergloom, and Grief Sequence.

Noah Amir Arjomand is a filmmaker currently enrolled in the MFA Writing for the Performing Arts program at UCR, where he is a chancellor's distinguished fellow in screenwriting. He is the author of Fixing Stories: Local Newsmaking and International Media in Turkey and Syria and co-directed and co-produced the feature-length documentary Eat Your Catfish about my mother's life with ALS. 

Vickie Vértiz was born and raised in Bell Gardens, a city in southeast Los Angeles County. With over 25 years of experience in social justice, writing, and education. Her writing is featured in the New York Times Magazine, the San Francisco Chronicle, Huizache, Nepantla, the Los Angeles Review of Books, among many others.

Cati Porter is the recipient of an Individual Artist Fellowship from the California Arts Council for 2023-24. Additionally, Cati Porter’s poetry has won or been a finalist in contests by: So To Speak, judged by Arielle Greenberg; Crab Creek Review, judged by Aimee Nezhukumatathil; and Gravity & Light, judged by Chella Courington. Cati Porter lives in Inland Southern California where she runs her Poemeleon: A Journal of Poetry and directs Inlandia Institute, a 501(c)(3) literary nonprofit.

Issam Zineh is a Palestinian-American poet and scientist. He is author of Unceded Land (Trio House Press, 2022), finalist for the Trio Award, Medal Provocateur, Housatonic Book Award, and Balcones Prize for Poetry, and the chapbook The Moment of Greatest Alienation (Ethel Press, 2021). His poems appear or are forthcoming in AGNI, Guernica, Gulf Coast, Pleiades, Tahoma Literary Review, The Rumpus, and elsewhere.

Melissa Studdard is the author of five books, including the poetry collections Dear Selection Committee. Her work has been featured by NPR, PBS, The New York Times, The Guardian, Ms. Magazine, and Houston Matters, and more. 

Minda Honey is the editor of Black Joy at Reckon, a newsletter has nearly 60K subscribers. Her essays on politics and relationships have appeared in Harper’s Baazar, the Los Angeles Review of Books, the Washington Post, the Guardian, the Oxford American, Teen Vogue, and Longreads. 

Daisy Ocampo Diaz (Caxcan, or Caz’ Ahmo, Indigenous Nation of Zacatecas, Mexico) earned her PhD in History from the University of California, Riverside in 2019. Her research in Native and Public History informs her work with museum exhibits, historical preservation projects, and community-based archives. 

Elena Karina Byrne is a screenwriter, essayist, reviewer, multi-media artist, and editor. She is The Los Angeles Times Festival of Books Programming Consultant & Poetry Stage Manager and Literary Programs Director for the historic The Ruskin Art Club. She is the author of five poetry collections.

Farnaz Fatemi is an Iranian American writer and editor in Santa Cruz, California. Her debut book, Sister Tongue زبان خواهر , was published in September 2022. It won the 2021 Stan and Tom Wick Poetry Prize, selected by Tracy K. Smith, from Kent State University Press, and received a Starred Review from Publisher’s Weekly. 

Lisa Teasley is a graduate of UCLA and a native of Los Angeles. Her critically acclaimed debut, Glow in the Dark, is winner of the Gold Pen Award and Pacificus Literary Foundation awards for fiction. She has also won the May Merrill Miller and the National Society of Arts & Letters Short Story awards. Teasley has a new story collection, Fluid, which was released on Cune Press, September 26, 2023.

Quincy Troupe is an awarding-winning author of 12 volumes of poetry, three children’s books, and six non-fiction works. In 2010 Troupe received the American Book Award for Lifetime Literary Achievement. Quincy Troupe is professor emeritus of the University of California, San Diego, formerly editor Code magazine and Black Renaissance Noire, a literary journal of the Institute of Africana Studies at New York University, and poetry editor of A Gathering of the Tribes online magazine.

Reza Aslan is s a renowned writer, commentator, professor, Emmy- and Peabody-nominated producer, and scholar of religions. A recipient of the prestigious James Joyce award, Aslan is the author of three internationally best-selling books, including the #1 New York Times Bestseller, Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth. Aslan is Distinguished Professor of Creative Writing at the University of California, Riverside and serves on the board of trustees for the Chicago Theological Seminary and The Yale Humanist Community.

Rigoberto González earned a degree in humanities and social sciences interdisciplinary studies from the University of California, Riverside, and an MFA from Arizona State University in Tempe. González is the author of five poetry collections, including The Book of Ruin (Four Way Books, 2019); Unpeopled Eden (Four Way Books, 2013), winner of the Lambda Literary Award and the 2014 Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize from the Academy of American Poets.

Donato Martinez teaches English Composition, Literature, and Creative Writing at Santa Ana College. His first full collection of poetry, Touch the Sky, was published in June by El Martillo Press. 

Jason Magabo Perez holds an MFA in writing and consciousness from New College of California, formerly in San Francisco, and a dual PhD in ethnic studies and communication from the University of California, San Diego. Perez is the author of I ask about what falls away, forthcoming in 2024; This is for the mostless (WordTech Editions, 2017); and Phenomenology of Superhero (Red Bird Chapbooks, 2016). 

Dave Eggers is the author of many books, among them The Eyes and the Impossible, The Circle, The Monk of Mokha, Heroes of the Frontier, A Hologram for the King, and What Is the What. He is the founder of McSweeney’s, an independent publishing company, and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

Kimberly Blaeser, writer, photographer, and scholar, is a past Wisconsin Poet Laureate. She is the author of five poetry collections, most recently the bi-lingual Résister en dansant/Ikwe-niimi: Dancing Resistance (2020), Copper Yearning (2019), and Apprenticed to Justice.

Marsha de la O was born and raised in Southern California. She earned her MFA from Vermont College and is the author of two collections of poetry: Black Hope (1997), winner of the New Issues Poetry Prize, and Antidote for Night (2015), winner of the Isabella Gardner Prize from BOA Editions. 

Cindy Juyoung Ok is a poet, former high school physics teacher, and university creative writing instructor. Her collection of poems, Ward Toward, won the Yale Younger Poets Prize.

More News May 08, 2019

Volunteers at Riverside National Cemetery’s annual “A Flag for Every Hero” event on Memorial Day weekend 2019 can now read biographies for many of the Veterans whose graves they adorn with flags, thanks in part to the work of two UCR Library employees.

When UC Riverside partnered with the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs National Cemetery Administration’s Veterans Legacy Program on a multi-year, federally-commissioned project called Along the Chaparral: Memorializing the Enshrined, Principal Investigator Allison Hedge Coke asked Data Librarian Kat Koziar to build the foundation for the project’s data management, and Special Research Projects Director David Rios to assist with local history and archival genealogical research.

Project funding comes from contracts totaling nearly $700,000 over three years, beginning on Feb. 27, 2018.

“It’s important that we recognize that people who served in the military who are interred in RNC – that they had a life beyond the military – and that’s what we’re trying to capture,” Koziar said.

“It was a project that mattered to me,” Hedge Coke explained, because it blends creative writing, local history, archival research, digital media, geospatial resources, and more. “You don’t create a project to push your agenda into the community. You fashion a project to fit what already exists there.”

According to the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, the Veteran population in California in 2016 was 1.74 million, the highest of all 50 states; and 131,000 Veterans resided in Riverside County. Those are among the reasons why Hedge Coke believed that the project’s aim and impact would be deeply meaningful to this community.

Hedge Coke’s project proposal intended to create an interactive GIS (geospatial information systems) application so that visitors or researchers could discover the life stories of the Veterans interred at RNC, which would be written by participating K-12 students. GIS consultant Mike Cohen developed the GIS application, which launched at the Closing Celebration on Nov. 29, 2018. The project also generated nine documentary films.

When Hedge Coke visited the RNC site with Koziar she was convinced that, with Koziar’s expertise and with UCR’s on-campus research libraries, they would be able to accomplish this colossal task.

“A lot of people have done work on this – but the base is the base, to give credit where it’s due,” Hedge Coke said. “Everything could not operate without the work that Kat put into it.”

Koziar created and runs the foundational hub of the project, on which everything else continues to expand, Hedge Coke explained. “Everything is semi-reliant – if not completely reliant – on that hub. We absolutely have to have that base to make a project of this breadth successful. It’s quite a bit of exemplary work from this brilliant woman.”

Koziar designed a filing and labeling system to allow the graduate fellows to claim particular people so they could divide up the work while avoiding duplicate efforts, and then to give K-12 students access to basic information about the interred for their research while writing the memorials. “The majority of the students working on this – they’re not data scientists, they’re in humanities,” she said. “I was able to teach some of these other skills because, even if they don’t think about it explicitly, they still have to use it. I enjoyed that.”

To assist with the project, Koziar recruited Rios for his expertise in local history, genealogical research, and his work with Inland Empire Memories -- a fledgling local cultural heritage collaboration; and Brian Geiger from the CHASS Center for Bibliographical Studies and Research.

Geiger helped tremendously because of his connection to the California Digital Newspaper Collection, which the students relied upon significantly while researching, Koziar said.

Hedge Coke acknowledged that Rios and Geiger have done a phenomenal job teaching the graduate fellows and K-12 students about local history, historical research, and where to find archives to learn more about the lives of the interred.

“The children are learning about some of the people who were little-known soldiers,” Rios said. “It gives them an idea of the sacrifices that people have made, and that it’s not just one particular group of people – it’s a wide variety. It’s great because this is Inland Empire Memories and that’s what our responsibilities are: to share resources about the history of people in Riverside and San Bernardino counties.”

The team dedicated to Along the Chaparral has included 75 adults and 2700 K-12 students to write the biographies – from Riverside Unified School District, Sherman Indian High School, Highland Academy in Beaumont, and other schools in Anza and Temecula. At times, up to one-third of the students in a class have discovered they were related to the person they were assigned to research, Hedge Coke said.

The Veterans Legacy program has created partnerships with nine universities across the country. “Our partnership with UC Riverside is one of our largest and our most dynamic,” said Bryce Carpenter, Program Manager for the Veterans Legacy Program. “I think it’s going to raise the bar for all future Veterans Legacy program partnerships.”

The Along the Chaparral team is developing a curriculum so that this project can be duplicated for other Veterans’ cemeteries with K-12 students nationwide, Koziar said.

To date, the students have published more than 500 life stories on the app. Considering the involvement with research, with story craft, with innovative digital platforms, and with K-12 students creating publishable work that heightens memorialization of these lives, the future impact of the project with K-12 students and teachers, UCR students and community, the city, county, Riverside National Cemetery and the greater region is truly immeasurable.

More News November 17, 2021

AUTHOR: SARAH NIGHTINGALE

On hot and steamy days in Saigon, Vietnam, there was only one place for an enlisted man to cool off for a while. “That place was the library,” said UC Riverside alumna Ann Kelsey, who served as a civilian librarian for the U.S. Army from 1969-70. “The libraries were air conditioned because of the books, not the people, though. If they weren’t, the books would mold in two days.” 

Kelsey’s service during the Vietnam War was the beginning of a career in library science and automation that would span more than four decades. Her recent pledge to UC Riverside, a $489,000 planned gift to the UCR Library, will continue Kelsey’s legacy in helping people learn through technology.

After meeting as a UCLA student with a U.S. Army Special Services recruiter, Ann Kelsey went overseas after graduation, overseeing four libraries during the Vietnam War.

Born in Indiana in 1946, Kelsey moved with her family to Riverside at the age of five, attending Riverside schools and graduating from Polytechnic High School. Her parents supported her dream of attending university and becoming a librarian, but money was tight. UCR—affordable, close to home, and offering the feel of a small liberal arts college—was the perfect fit.

“I was the first person in my family to go to college and I lived at home, so I spent a lot of time at The Barn, which was the gathering point for students who didn’t live in the dorms,” Kelsey said. “I had so much fun going to dances and parties. I also loved the classes and the teachers, and I learned so much.” 

Anthropology classes, in which Kelsey developed an interest in Southeast Asia and Vietnamese history and culture, changed her world view. 

“My whole experience at UCR was wonderful. It really was a life-changing experience,” she said.

After graduating from UCR with a double major in English and anthropology in 1968, Kelsey earned a master’s in library science at UCLA. During her time on that larger, more politically active campus, Kelsey felt suffocated by anti-war protests.

“The anti-war movement was very active at UCLA. It was constant hostility and strife,” Kelsey said. “Bruin Walk, which is right outside Powell Library, was a focal gathering point. All my classes were there of course, so I had to walk through that every day. That was in 1968 and there were Vietnam veterans attempting to go to school. I was just appalled.”

When U.S. Army Special Services recruiters came to campus looking for librarians, Kelsey knew she had an opportunity to show her support for Americans serving in Vietnam.

“I filled in the application form, sent it off and, two months after I graduated, I was my way to Vietnam. There were 300 soldiers and me on the plane and that kind of set the tone for the whole year.”

During her time in Vietnam, Kelsey oversaw four libraries, helping soldiers with everything from homework for correspondence courses to recreational reading.

Ann Kelsey's gift will help strengthen and sustain the UCR Library's programs and services in emerging technology.

Ann Kelsey's gift will help strengthen and sustain the UCR Library's programs and services in emerging technology.
“The libraries functioned very much like a small town public library,” Kelsey said. “That was the purpose of the Army Morale and Recreation program, whether it was library, the entertainment shows, or the rec center—it was to bring a touch of home to the combat zone.”

Returning to the United States, Kelsey settled on the East Coast, working at public libraries and community colleges while supplementing her income with freelance and contract work. In the late 1970s, while working at the Morris County Free Library in Whippany, N.J., Kelsey found herself at the forefront of library automation.

“I could tell this was where the future of libraries was going to be,” Kelsey said. "At that time I was in charge of the children’s book department, so I volunteered to work extra, retrospectively converting the manual shelf list to a digitized record.”

UCR Alumni Association events in the New York tri-state area rekindled Kelsey’s connection with the university in the 1990s. At that time she became a member of the Alumni Association and began making a monthly pledge to the association’s scholarship fund. 

In-line with her life and career, Kelsey’s latest gift—a $489,000 planned gift to the UCR Library—will help strengthen and sustain the library’s programs and services in emerging technology.

“The UCR Library is honored by the generosity and confidence shown by Ann Kelsey in her establishment of this bequest, said Steven Mandeville-Gamble, University Librarian. “Ms. Kelsey’s career has spanned the advent of library automation to the evolution of digital scholarship and emerging digital literacies. This gift will allow the UCR Library to continue to evolve to meet the increasingly sophisticated technology needs of our faculty and students for many decades to come.” 

More about Kelsey’s service in Vietnam is available as oral history interviews in the Virtual Vietnam Archive at Texas Tech University and Rutgers University Oral History Archives. “In Their Footsteps,” a play based on the oral histories of Kelsey and four other women documents the often untold experiences of the thousands of women who served in Vietnam during the war. It has been performed in New York, New Jersey, Texas, Ohio, Italy, the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, and Australia.

 

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