More News November 02, 2015

2015 Highlander Welcome Week a resounding success

This marked the UCR Library's first, but certainly not last, participation in the Tartan Soul Kickoff event put on by the UCR Office of Student Life. More than 540 students mingled with a multitude of campus departments that set up activity booths around the UCR bell tower.

Students filled out "passports" by completing an activity at each booth, and received Tartan Soul shirts as their reward. Respect — a Tartan Soul value that exemplifies a Highlander through their regard for others' rights and dignity — was an underlying theme of the event.

The library booth welcomed students who got the chance to guess the decade in which a handful of photos from the University Archives were taken. The library's Special Collections and University Archives department was of great interest to students, as were library services such as laptop checkout, 24-hour chat reference, interlibrary loans, and library workshops and events.

Additional Tartan Soul events are expected to take place throughout the year, each focusing on one of the Highlander values of integrity, accountability, excellence, and respect.

• Read more about Fred Patten Papers

More News December 23, 2016

Our Jay Kay and Doris Klein Librarian for Science Fiction, JJ Jacobson recently contributed a chapter to a book titled, Teaching and Learning in Virtual Environments: Archives, Museums, and Libraries.

JJ’s chapter, Crowdsourcing the Fictive Experience: Virtual-World Emergent Narrative from a Collections Perspective, is about the practice of Immersive Interactive Improvisatory Narrative, or IIIN.

“It’s a very common feature of virtual worlds of all kinds,” JJ explained. “IIIN is a modality of storytelling. There’s role-play, sometimes recreational, sometimes tied to history, as well as re-enactment and historical interpretation. It’s connected to speculative literature because many of these narrative interactions exist in a context that is speculative – alternate history, for instance – or occasions for this kind of narrative are in a context that is related to or is directly the speculative or fantastical imagination.”

IIIN can be traced to modern improvisatory theater forms, JJ explained, such as the Renaissance Faire; and it is often found in Civil War and similar reenactments, which exist to explore history and educate participants as well as audiences. “It’s an interesting question to compare those to the evolution of community theater, too” she continued. “All of these things exist in the real world, but with some specific entertainment or educational mission. One of the questions we barely touched on was: ‘When did IIIN start to become pure recreation?’”

JJ’s chapter is the result of three distinct discussions on the topic of IIIN. JJ spoke with an expert on living history in museums and places like Plimoth Plantation, a special collections librarian from a well-respected institution, and a professional historical interpreter who plays Mildred Cecil, Lady Burleigh, wife of Lord Burleigh, chief advisor to Queen Elizabeth I.

“These conversations opened up some questions worth thinking about, questions that nobody else seems to be writing about, but that people within the reenactment and historical recreation and virtual worlds talk about all the time,” JJ said. “We talked about the phenomenon and why someone might study it, what a research collection might look like.”

To date, JJ has not seen much scholarly writing on this topic, especially not with the same emphasis.

According to JJ, some questions that could inspire scholarly research on the subject of IIIN might include:

• What kind of activity is it, exactly?
• If we trace it back to various kinds of plays or theater, is that sufficient?
• What are we doing in an historical enactment, with its factual constraints?
• If a library were to collect examples of it, what kinds of research might that support?
• What kind of researchers might use them?
• What would a collection surround them with as secondary source material?

“The Eaton Collection is largely a collection of texts and other narrative forms, but stories that are already done and finished are not the only occasion for the fantastical imagination to work,” JJ explained. “So here is a very interesting way of creating something that could easily be subject matter in the Eaton Collection. If people have made up their own country and they act the story together and build it up as they go, that’s still the kind of thing we collect. Those kinds of worlds, those kinds of subjects are intensely interesting to me. Even though you won’t find those exact worlds in the Eaton Collection, you’ll find many like them in motivation, structure, and so on.”

The book was published by Libraries Unlimited in 2016 and is now available on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and other retailers.

• Read more about Policies

• Read more about Robert L. Forward Papers

More Past Exhibits Phoenix Alexander, Andrew Lippert, and Karen Raines July 07, 2023

Science fiction, fantasy, and other fantastical genres frequently incorporate - and sometimes even build from scratch – complex linguistic systems that can help orient readers in an unfamiliar setting. These languages help answer some of the questions of how an imaginary society, even an imaginary species, functions.

This exhibit showcases a broad range of imaginary languages across multiple media: film, television, comic, novel, and short story. Amongst the materials on display here, you’ll come across a reality-warping alien language that alters the human relationship with time; ancient, mythic languages spoken by equally ancient and mythic races; and languages constructed to be ‘universal’, speaking across cultures and geographies.

Visit Special Collections & University Archives to view the exhibit or learn more by downloading the exhibit guide here.

Event	Transcribing the Imaginary
Location	Tomás Rivera Library, 4th floor, Special Collections & University Archives
Dates	July 7, 2023 - September 22, 2023
Hours	10 a.m. - 4 p.m.
Parking	Free Visitor Parking is available on Fridays, starting at 12:00 PM through 6:00 AM Monday morning in the unreserved spaces of the following parking lots/structures: Lot 6 Blue Lot 13 Blue Big Springs Parking Structure 2 Lot 26 Gold Lot 30 Gold Lot 50 Gold Paid Visitor Parking information can be found here.

More News September 21, 2015

Library launches new exhibit program with opening display in partnership with LGBT Resource Center.

In celebration of LGBT History Month, the UCR Library will launch its new exhibition program with a poster display entitled The History of the LGBT Civil Rights Movement. Created by the ONE Archives Foundation located in West Hollywood, the material "explores the incredibly inspiring journey of the LGBTQ Civil Rights movement" from the 1940s to early 1990s.

Nancy Jean Tubbs, Director of the UCR LGBT Resource Center, approached UCR Librarian Steve Mandeville-Gamble earlier this year to solidify an ongoing relationship of education and support for our students, faculty, staff, and broader community. As the conversation evolved and the ONE Archives exhibit came to light, the partnership was naturally evident. Excited to launch a new, world-class exhibit program in the library, Mandeville-Gamble eagerly agreed to host the exhibit as well as opening ceremonies and related programming.

From the start of "gayborhoods," to the Lavender Scare, the Stonewall Riots, the national pride movement, and the AIDS crisis, The History of the LGBT Civil Rights Movement complements UCR's own history in supporting the LGBT community. In 1993, UCR was the first campus in the state of California to open a professionally-staffed LGBT resource center and, in 1996, the first to offer an LGBT studies minor. We are proud to be the first public university in the nation to offer gender-inclusive housing, to co-found T*Camp — the first intercampus retreat in the nation for trans/genderqueer and gender questioning college students, and to found the BlaqOUT Conference — the first college conference in the nation serving Black/African American students and students of African descent who identify on the LGBT spectrum.

The History of the LGBT Civil Rights Movement exhibition will open on October 12, 2015 in Rivera Library on the University of California, Riverside campus.

• Read more about Walter L. Huber Papers

• Read more about Rupert and Jeannette Costo Papers

More News April 11, 2016

Exhibit honoring past UCR Chancellor now on display.

An exhibition honoring Tomás Rivera, the youngest and first Latino Chancellor in the UC system and the namesake of the Rivera Library, opened in Special Collections & University Archives on Monday, April 11. Rivera was born in 1935 to Mexican migrant workers, and was among the first generation of Chicanos to earn a PhD. He was an accomplished author, educator, and administrator who unexpectedly died at the age of 48 while serving as UCR’s Chancellor.

The exhibition focuses on his commitment to the arts, higher education, and activism and is curated by librarians Melissa Cardenas-Dow and Stephanie Milner. It is just one of the projects supported by a $10,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) and the American Library Association (ALA) as part of Latino Americans: 500 Years of History. The opening coincides with the 28th Tomás Rivera Conference, an annual public event at UCR that focuses on core issues facing Chicanos and Latinos.