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UC water archive to leave Berkeley campus, go to two campuses in south state
By Mike Taugher Contra Costa Times
Posted: 07/19/2010 04:36:49 PM PDT
Updated: 07/19/2010 05:25:01 PM PDT
The West’s premier archive of historical materials about water development is being moved from UC Berkeley to two universities in Southern California.
The Water Resources Center Archives, a unique collection of technical reports, speeches, photographs and other historical materials, has been housed at the Berkeley campus for more than a half-century.
However, budget worries and concerns that the Agriculture and Natural Resources Division of the UC president’s office lacked the expertise to maintain the archive led university officials to seek proposals from other schools interested in housing the collection.
Late last week, UC Senior Vice President Dan Dooley announced that the archive would be moved to libraries at UC Riverside and Cal State San Bernardino.
In making the announcement, UC officials said that UC Riverside has a record of expanding digital access to materials about agriculture and the environment.
The materials, including 200,000 technical reports and thousands of photographs, maps, newsletters speeches and other documents, are scheduled to be moved beginning this fall.
“We have a strong interest in preserving and digitizing the collection for the future “… to ensure the widest research access to all of the archive’s contents,” UC Riverside librarian Ruth Jackson said.
The school plans to charge for Internet access to the materials, which now are available for free.
“I think it’s sad that we’re going to be leaving Berkeley after 51 years, but I look forward to the water archive continuing to serve UC and the California water community from the Riverside campus,” said Linda Vida, librarian and archive director for more than 17 years. She is one of four employees at the archive.
The collection is open Monday through Friday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., but Vida said it was unknown whether it would remain open on the Berkeley campus after July.