More News August 20, 2015

The service of a Congressional champion of science and civil rights is being documented at the UCR Library.

In what was formerly the Copy Center in the quiet basement of the Tomás Rivera Library, Jessica Geiser and her student workers process the papers and materials of former U.S. Congressman George E. Brown, Jr. who represented Inland Southern California in Congress for 14 terms. Known as a champion for science and a staunch defender of civil liberties and human rights, Congressman Brown's papers document his life and career from the late 1930s to his passing in 1999.

In 2010, Congressman Brown's widow, Marta Brown, donated 600 boxes of documents, photographs, and other materials that detailed the Congressman's 14 terms to UCR. Included were approximately 7,000 photographs, 114 VHS tapes, 89 audio cassettes, nearly 600 color slides, and a multitude of reels, floppy discs, and CDs. With the gift of this collection, a mission for the purpose of the project was developed: to ensure the preservation and accessibility of George Brown’s extensive collection at UCR for future generations of scholars, reporters, and leaders in science, labor, business, and public service.

The processing of this comprehensive project began when Geiser was hired as a project archivist in September 2014. Her first task was to relocate and reorganize the unopened boxes prior to unpacking. Once moved, she opened each box and created a content list. "This step was probably the most important step of the entire project and needed to be as detailed as possible," Geiser writes. This information would inform the arrangement of materials, the supplies and staff needed, and the processing time required to complete the project.

As Geiser combed through each box, she collected information on the subjects and dates of the materials, their physical extent in inches, the estimated amount of folders, and the condition of the enclosed materials. Consulting other congressional archival collections, she devised an arrangement scheme that mirrored the ways in which Brown and other Congressmen created and stored their records while in use. A high level of detail and close attention were vital to this success. Finally, she developed the plan which dictates the goals, and methodology to meet those goals, for the entirety of the two-year project.

She and her team then began re-foldering the materials in acid-free folders and boxes that allow for better preservation in long-term storage. Ms. Geiser also ensures that other basic preservation activities take place, such as removing metal paperclips and rubber bands which cause damage, and photocopying fragile and acidic materials — such as newsprint and fax paper — to prevent further deterioration. Although some material is confidential and restricted and must be redacted, the goal is to keep as much information accessible to researchers as possible.

The George Brown papers hold clues to key advances of today and major innovations of tomorrow, and a blueprint for bipartisan problem-solving spanning four decades of federal decision-making. This unique trove of knowledge will be accessible to current and future entrepreneurs and students of effective public service.

As she works towards opening the collection at the end of this two-year project, Ms. Geiser maintains a blog in order to connect with any potential researchers or other interested parties.

More News April 17, 2023

The UCR Library acquired access to several primary source archives from Gale and AM, formerly known as Adam Matthew Digital.

New resources from Gale:

• Slavery and Anti-Slavery: A Transnational Archive 

  Slavery and Anti-Slavery: A Transnational Archive is devoted to the study and understanding of the history of slavery in America and the rest of the world from the 17th century to the late 19th century. The archive consists of more than five million cross-searchable pages sourced from books, pamphlets, newspapers, periodicals, legal documents, court records, monographs, manuscripts, and maps from many different countries covering the history of the slave trade.

• Native American Studies from Archives Unbound 

  Collection of primary sources and more sourced from the following archives:

  • Presbyterian Historical Society Collection of Missionaries' Letters, 1833-1893

  • American Indian Movement and Native American Radicalism

  • Meriam Report on Indian Administration and the Survey of Conditions of the Indians in the U.S.

  • The Indian Trade in the Southeastern Spanish Borderlands: Papers of Panton, Leslie and Company

  • The War Department and Indian Affairs, 1800-1824

• Indigenous Peoples of North America, Part 2 

  Primary source collection for research into the cultural, political, and social history of Native Peoples from the seventeenth to the twentieth century. The UCR Library has access to parts 1 & 2.

New resources from AM:

• Colonial Caribbean: Colonial Office Files from The National Archives, UK

  Stretching from Jamaica and the Bahamas to Trinidad and Tobago, Colonial Caribbean makes available materials from 27 Colonial Office file classes from The National Archives, UK. Covering the history of the various territories under British colonial governance from 1624 to 1870, this extensive resource includes administrative documentation, trade and shipping records, minutes of council meetings, and details of plantation life, colonial settlement, imperial rivalries across the region, and the growing concern of absentee landlords.

• Confidential Print: Latin America

  This collection consists of the Confidential Print for Central and South America and the French- and Spanish-speaking Caribbean. Topics covered include slavery and the slave trade, immigration, relations with indigenous peoples, wars and territorial disputes, the fall of the Brazilian monarchy, British business and financial interests, industrial development, the building of the Panama Canal, and the rise to power of populist rulers such as Perón in Argentina and Vargas in Brazil.

• Empire Studies from AM Scholar 

  This collection offers a rich array of primary and secondary sources for the study of the British Empire. It features material on British colonial policy and government; perspectives on life in British colonies; the relationship between gender and empire; race; and class.

• Literary Print Culture: The Stationers' Company Archive

  The Stationers’ Company Archive is one of the most important resources for understanding the workings of the early book trade, the printing and publishing community, and the establishment of legal requirements for copyright provisions and the history of bookbinding. Explore extremely rare documents dating from 1554 to the 21st century in this resource of research material for historians and literary scholars.

• Medieval and Early Modern Studies from AM Scholar 

  This collection provides a wide range of primary sources covering social, cultural, political, scientific, and religious perspectives from the 12th to early18th centuries. Document types include illuminated manuscripts, personal papers, diaries and letters, rare books, receipt books, and manuscript sheet music. The breadth of sources provided within this collection is extraordinary, from sources concerning the Black Death to the Restoration of the English monarchy and the Glorious Revolution.

• Medieval Family Life: The Paston, Cely, Plumpton, Stonor and Armburgh Papers

  Includes five major letter collections and associated manuscripts from fifteenth-century England, which take the user into the world of medieval families, businesses, relationships, trade, politics and communities. Medieval Family Life presents full-color images of the original medieval manuscripts of which these letter collections are constituted, alongside fully searchable transcriptions drawn from available printed editions.

• Medieval Travel Writing

  Medieval Travel Writing is an extensive collection of manuscript materials for the study of medieval travel writing in fact and in fantasy. The core of the material is a collection of medieval manuscripts from libraries around the world, dating from the thirteenth to the sixteenth centuries and focusing on accounts of journeys to the Holy Land, India and China. Texts include some of the most influential prose works of the late Middle Ages – notably the books of Marco Polo and ‘Sir John Mandeville’ – but also important items by lesser-known authors such as John of Plano Carpini and Odoric of Pordenone.

• Nineteenth Century Literary Society: The John Murray Publishing Archive

  Nineteenth Century Literary Society makes available more than 1,400 items from the archive of the historic John Murray publishing company. Primary source materials span the entirety of the long nineteenth century and document the golden era of the House of Murray from its inception in 1768. Records digitized in this resource predominantly focus on the tenure of John Murray II and his son, John Murray III, as they rose to prominence in the publishing trade, launching long-running series including the political periodical Quarterly Review, and publishing genre-defining titles such as Darwin’s On the Origin of Species, Austen’s Emma and Livingstone’s Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa.

• Race Relations in America

  Sourced from the records of the Race Relations Department of the United Church Board for Homeland Ministries, housed at the Amistad Research Center in New Orleans, this resource provides access to a wealth of documents highlighting different responses to the challenges of overcoming prejudice, segregation and racial tensions. These range from survey material, including interviews and statistics, to educational pamphlets, administrative correspondence, and photographs and speeches from the Annual Race Relations Institutes.

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.

More News September 19, 2024

Memorandum of understanding signed for four-year agreement that will empower more UC authors to share their scholarship openly with the world.

The University of California (UC) and Taylor & Francis today announced a memorandum of understanding for a four-year read and publish agreement that will make it easier and more affordable for UC researchers to publish open access (OA) articles in nearly 2,500 Taylor & Francis journals. The new partnership between UC and one of the ten largest publishers of UC research advances a mutual goal to empower more authors to share their scholarship openly with readers around the globe.

Under the agreement, the UC Libraries will automatically cover the OA fees in full for any UC corresponding author who chooses to publish OA in Taylor & Francis and Routledge journals. Authors of articles accepted for publication in a hybrid or full OA title will have the opportunity to choose OA at no cost to them.

Taylor & Francis has one of the world’s largest Humanities and Social Sciences (HSS) portfolios, with more journals in the Arts & Humanities Citation Index® than any other publisher. The new agreement advances a broader goal within UC to expand support for authors publishing HSS research, areas that generally have had limited funding for OA publishing.

To maximize the number of UC researchers who can benefit from the newly signed agreement, authors of qualifying articles published since January 1, 2024, will be given the opportunity to retrospectively convert their article to open access, with the OA fees fully covered. Authors who have already published OA since January 1 will be offered refunds for OA fees already paid.

In addition to extensive OA publishing support, the agreement also ensures the UC community has continued reading access to nearly 1,300 Taylor & Francis journals.

“With Taylor & Francis’ extensive Humanities and Social Sciences suite of journals, this new agreement offers an exciting opportunity for UC researchers to share their work more openly and widely than ever before,” said Mark Hanna, Associate Professor of History at UC San Diego and chair of the UC faculty Academic Senate’s systemwide committee on library and scholarly communication. “It underscores UC’s commitment to advancing academic research, removing barriers to access, and amplifying the impact of the important work being done across disciplines.”

“The University of California has been a pioneer in advancing OA in the United States, and we have a shared belief in the benefits of opening up the latest research,” said Jeff Voci, Senior Vice President & Commercial Lead – Americas at Taylor & Francis. “I am therefore delighted that many months of work with the UC Libraries team has resulted in a creative solution which fulfills their ambitious objectives. Since 2016, our UC agreements have included help for researchers to choose OA and the new partnership will significantly extend that support, boosting the reach and impact of trusted knowledge.”

Taylor & Francis is a leading publisher of open access journals, books, and research platforms. UC joins over 950 global institutions partnering with Taylor & Francis through open access agreements, including 14 others in the Americas.

For more details about the agreement, please visit the UC Office of Scholarly Communication website. If you need assistance or have any questions, please contact our STEM Collections Librarian Michele Potter at michele.potter@ucr.edu. 

More News July 17, 2018

The Library has a new launch date for the new catalog and search interface: Saturday, July 21.

You may have noticed that we had to delay the launch due to unforeseen issues with data migration. Below are the pertinent dates regarding the transition.

The following service alerts are in effect:

• Thursday, July 12 to Saturday, July 21:

No new holds, recalls or paging will be available until the catalog has launched on Saturday, July 21. 

• Friday, July 20: limited circulation services*

*Limited circulation means checkouts and returns.

• Saturday, July 21 at 10 a.m.: Catalog launch

On July 21, we will be able to establish new user accounts, see what’s on hold, and provide information regarding overdue items.

We have tried our best to anticipate all possible issues with the new system. However, if you run across anything that has slipped our notice, please email us at library@ucr.edu or use the comment form on the library website.

This new library catalog offers more intuitive ways for you to discover new content, including:

• Combined access to both print materials and online licensed e-resources
• Easy-to-tailor search results using content filters in the left sidebar
• Book and journal cover image previews
• Table of contents previews

Again, we truly appreciate your patience and thank you for your understanding during this important transition!

More News November 29, 2022

More News June 14, 2019

The UCR Library is pleased to announce a new Fines & Fees structure that will greatly benefit both the library and its patrons, effective July 1, 2019.

We are eliminating all processing fees ($10 per transaction) and campus late payment penalty charges ($25 per month), as the UCR Library now will handle all payments directly through its own secure online portal starting on July 1. By handling payments for fines and fees directly, the library has developed a quick and efficient process that takes your time into consideration.

In general, you will notice a reduction in short-term Reserve Fines and Recall Fines, which will benefit the vast majority of patrons.

Effective July 1, 2019, the library’s new Fine & Fee structure will be:

• Reserve Fines: $10 per hour
• Recall Fines: $2 per day
• Replacement Fees: Due to an increase in the average cost of books and collection materials, this fee will increase from $75 to $100 per item.

Additionally, the UCR Library is offering a Replacement Fees Amnesty Period from June 17 - 30, 2019.

Please log into your secure UCR Library account portal to see whether you have any outstanding balances due.

Should you have any questions about your account, please contact  library-billing@ucr.edu.

• Read more about FAQs

More News February 19, 2020

The Public Library of Science (PLOS) and the University of California (UC) today announced a two-year agreement that will make it easier and more affordable for UC researchers to publish in the nonprofit open access publisher’s suite of journals.

By bringing together PLOS, one of the world’s leading native open access publishers, and UC, which accounts for nearly 10 percent of all U.S. publishing output, the pilot breaks new ground in the global movement to advance open access publishing and empower more authors to share their research with the world.

“Scientific research is increasingly an international endeavor, often at its best when it crosses conceptual, disciplinary, and technological boundaries,” said Keith Yamamoto, Vice Chancellor for Science Policy and Strategy and Professor of Cellular Molecular Pharmacology at UC San Francisco, and a member of the PLOS Board of Directors. “Building that global continuum of discovery demands open, efficient, and rapid distribution of information. This agreement shows that key institutional stakeholders — universities and publishers — can work cooperatively to develop sustainable models that serve science, scientists, and trainees.”

Part of the agreement includes a new workflow, which the partners are working to implement by the end of spring quarter. Once the workflow has been finalized, the UC Libraries will automatically pay the first $1,000 of the article processing charge (APC) for all UC authors who choose to publish in a PLOS journal. Authors who do not have research funds available can request full funding of the article processing charge from the libraries, ensuring that lack of research funds does not present a barrier for UC authors who wish to publish in PLOS journals. This subsidy will be available for articles submitted after the new article processing system is up and running.

The pilot will illustrate that an institutional participation model that leverages multiple funding sources, rather than only grant funds, can enable a sustainable and inclusive path to full open access.

“This agreement is the result of open and fully collaborative discussions,” said Alison Mudditt, CEO of PLOS. “Open access publishers and libraries are natural allies, and we’re thrilled our first agreement is with UC, given their reputation for strong action supporting open access in the market. Open access is evolving. We have a duty to meet those changing needs with solutions that ensure the future of open access is accessible for all.”

Most institutional agreements have so far focused on subscription publishers that are transitioning to open access. PLOS and UC believe that institutional agreements of this kind can and should include native open access publishers since they are already aligned with current and emerging open access policies and mandates. This pilot builds upon UC’s commitment to a level playing field that supports all authors and all publishers in alignment with the university’s guidelines for evaluating transformative agreements.

“UC and PLOS have a long and close relationship as leaders in open access publishing — and this pilot builds on that partnership,” said Ivy Anderson, associate executive director of UC’s California Digital Library and co-chair of the team overseeing UC’s publisher negotiations. “We want to make it easier and more affordable for researchers to choose open access journals like PLOS when deciding where to submit their work for publication. We intend to continue to partner with a variety of publishers so that together we can help lead the transition to full open access.”

Additionally, the UCR Library is still seeking input from UC Riverside's faculty, esearchers and graduate students regarding the impact the Elsevier shutoff has had on your research and teaching. You can learn more by reading this article, and take the poll here.

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.