The University of California Libraries: A Plan for Development (1977)

CHAPTER I
THE UNIVERSITY AND ITS LIBRARIES
Information is power. Used rightly, it can cure physical, mental,
and social ills; it can improve the quality of our life, the environment
we live in, and the world we leave to our children. Without it,
even the most earnest endeavors are likely to fail. Information, then,
is vital to all of us, personally and collectively.
To no institution is access to information more crucial than to a
university, and the keys to this kingdom of information are its libraries.
In them lie the results of knowledge discovered, and the bases for new
knowledge; through them, knowledge is transmitted, and new knowledge
discovered.
The libraries are thus central to the mission of the university,
integrated in and integral to its endeavors. Because of this centrality,
the libraries themselves are strongly influenced by the nature and
history of the particular institutions they serve. Libraries obviously
do not operate in a vacuum, and each of the libraries of the University
of California has been uniquely shaped by the size, stature, and history
of the University. Each of the libraries also has its own history,
conditioning in many ways what it is and does today.
In planning for the future of the University's libraries then, it
is important to understand the past.
The University. In the hectic gold rush days of 1849, pioneers
of the State drafted a constitution in Monterey which contained the
promise of a University of California. The Union admitted California
the following year, but another eighteen years passed before the promise
could be realized. On March 23, 1868, Governor Henry Haight signed
the Organic Act which officially created the University. Its initial
site was the Oakland campus of the College of California, which offered
its buildings and land on the condition that a "complete University" be