Library Overview

The special collections of the Ethnic Studies Library include over 100 Asian-American archives, including the Kem Lee Archive of historical photographs of San Francisco's Chinatown and the archives of Him Mark Lai, the "dean of Chinese-American studies." It includes important historical collections of Native American serials and posters and a complete set of the research literature on northern California tribal peoples gathered by the California Indian Library Collections project. The H.K. Yuen Social Movement Archive consists of sound recordings of virtually all the civil rights speeches and rallies held on the steps of Sproul Plaza from the 1960s to the 1980s. It was named one of the Ten Treasures of the Ten Million when the UC Berkeley Library reached its ten millionth volume. The library staff continues to be inspired by the courage of the students of the 1960s and 1970s to stand up for their educational rights and is proud to contribute special ethnic research materials to the campus library holdings. The Bancroft Library is a partner in the goal to preserve historical documents relating to ethnic minorities. For example, it holds the Social Protest Collection and the Meiklejohn Civil Liberties Institute Records and many collections on the themes of labor and civil rights related to ethnic minorities and immigrants. Earlier collections include source documents from the Spanish and Mexican periods in the American West, including diaries dating from 1725-1821, transcriptions prepared for H. H. Bancroft from the original Spanish and Mexican archives in California (later destroyed in the 1906 San Francisco earthquake), the Bancroft Dictations with the Californios, and the collected private papers of Mexican Californians.

University of California, Berkeley Library
Ethnic Studies Library
30 Stephens Hall #2360
University of California
Berkeley, California 94720-2360
http://eslibrary.berkeley.edu/
csl@library.berkeley.edu
(510) 642-3947 (t)
(510) 643-8433 (f)