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

I. The University and Its Libraries 13
be needed to keep pace with the intellectual demands of the times
and to strike a proper balance in support among the individual
campuses that make up the University of California. Finding and
maintaining that balance will be the central planning issue
of the 1970s. 3
The Libraries. For the libraries, the balancing act is likely to
be even more difficult than for the University as a whole, because, as
the Academic Plan itself notes, "the era of rapid physical expansion
has passed, but the rapid growth of knowledge itself continues." 4 ' This
knowledge must be made available, not only to each library's local
constituency, but increasingly to the system at large. Like the campuses,
each library builds on its strengths and unique characteristics,
influenced not only by the general history of the campuses outlined
above, but in many cases by the particular circumstances of its own past.
The "library" donated by the College of California in 1869 for
"the complete University" consisted of a grand total of 1,200 volumes.
Present concerns about access to the collections pale by comparison
with the situation in the beginning: the library rules specified that
it was to be open for one hour only, from 4:00 to 5:00, and that "at
five o'clock precisely at a signal given by the Librarian, all books
shall be immediately returned." 5 By 1872, the collections had grown to
4,651 volumes "including one novel." As yet, however, it had no fulltime
librarian--Bret Harte had been offered the post but declined--until
in 1875, a graduate of the previous year, Joseph C. Rowell, was appointed.
In 1883, he succeeded in having the library made a depository for U.S.
government publications, and from that time the library grew rapidly;
by the turn of the century it had almost passed 100,000 volumes, and
15 years later had passed 300,000. Rowell (who introduced the concept
of the card catalog to the West Coast, as noted in a later chapter) began
to plan new methods of access to this large and growing collection, and
3
University of California Academic Plan, 1974-1978, pp. 3-4.
4
Ibid., p. 3.
5
Russell H. Fitzgibbon, Libraries of the University of California, p. 13.
Many historical items in the discussion that follows are also from this
excellent booklet, published by the University in 1965.