Special Research Collections

What do Fidel Castro, Sid Vicious, JonBenet Ramsey, Larry Rivers, William Burroughs, and Benazir Bhutto have in common? They are all subjects of investigative reporting by the award-winning American journalist Ann Louise Bardach.

In 2018, the UC Santa Barbara Library Department of Special Research Collections acquired Bardach’s lifetime career research files, documenting her eclectic and deeply reported journalism from 1979 to 2018, as well as the five books she authored or edited.

UC Santa Barbara Library Special Research Collections was given an impressive collection of theatrical Shakespeare recordings last fall, a legacy of scholar and author, Dr. Robert J. O’Brien, who accumulated the collection over his many years of study, collection, and travel.

Dalip Singh Saund made history in 1957 when he became the first Asian American, the first Indian American, and the first Sikh elected to the United States Congress, serving California’s 29th District in the House of Representatives until 1963. His papers were recently donated to UCSB Library Special Research Collections so researchers can study his life and impact on history. 

Mitchell Kriegman, a screenwriter, novelist, director, performer, and producer known for creating the acclaimed Nickelodeon and Disney series, Clarissa Explains it All, Bear in the Big Blue House, and The Book of Pooh, among others, is donating his papers to UC Santa Barbara Library.

“This donation will enhance the Library’s research collections in television, an area of growing interest on campus,” said David Seubert, curator of UCSB Library’s Performing Arts Collection. 

Thousands of historic sound recordings held by UCSB Library will soon be freely accessible online thanks to a prestigious $349,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

“Tens of thousands of recordings that never made it to CDs or digital services line the shelves of public archives, unheard,” said David Seubert, curator for UCSB Library’s Performing Arts Collection and project director for the newly announced NEH grant. “We’re working to change that.”

​Meet Stewart Engart

Since the UCSB Library launched a project in 2002 to record and digitize its Cylinder Audio Archive, the archive has grown to become the largest online collection of downloadable historic sound recordings. 

This work to preserve the earliest commercial form of recorded sound and make it broadly available to download or stream for free wouldn’t be possible without the help of dedicated students like Stewart Engart.

Floyd Norman - who made history in 1956 by becoming the first African American cartoon animator at Disney Studios - delivered the first installment of his papers to the UC Santa Barbara Library on Sept. 16, which includes mid-1960s 16 mm films, animation materials, cartoon collections, and audio interviews. The materials will be digitized for public use. 

“Miraculous little machines,” wrote Henri Temianka in his 1968 essay for The Instrumentalist titled “In Praise of Tape Recorders.” The virtuoso violinist, conductor, teacher, author, and founder of the Paganini Quartet and California Chamber Symphony extolled the devices for their myriad uses: to record lessons, to listen back to (and thus improve) playing, to serve as an ever-ready piano accompaniment, and more.

“I can think of no better investment,” he wrote.

Original, handwritten manuscripts by an author who has been called a Nobel Prize contender and compared to Ernest Hemingway are now available for everyone around the world to see.

Santa Barbara County’s wine business got a big boost in 2004 thanks to a little movie called Sideways but the region had been cultivating grapes long before Paul Giamatti sipped his way through the Santa Ynez Valley. The area’s wine industry goes all the way back to the Mission era when priests and Presidio soldiers planted vineyards to make wine for sacramental and daily use.