UC Santa Cruz Other Recent Work
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UC Santa Cruz Other Recent Work Title Donald T. Clark: Early UCSC History and the Founding of the University Library Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/2n20r98m Authors Regional History Project, UCSC Library Clark, Donald T. Jarrell, Randall Publication Date 1993-04-01 Supplemental Material https://escholarship.org/uc/item/2n20r98m#supplemental eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California Table of Contents INTRODUCTION viii EARLY LIFE Family History 1 Berkeley, California 4 High School Years 5 Willamette University 6 Berkeley Public Library 8 Columbia University School of Library Science 10 Emily Espenshade Clark 13 The New York Public Library 15 The Leos 18 Thoughts on Library School 19 BAKER LIBRARY, HARVARD BUSINESS SCHOOL Graduate Studies 22 Appointment as Assistant Librarian 27 Relations with Faculty 28 World War II Developing Harvard’s Officer Training School 29 Managing Personnel 33 The Post-War Period 35 The Book Budget 36 Publication Program 36 Collection Planning 37 Art in Business Exhibit 40 Railway and Locomotive Society 45 Student Reading Room 46 Status of Women 48 Social Life in Lexington 49 Six Moon Hill 50 Civic Activities 55 Lexington School Board 56 Library Consulting 59 Social Life 61 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, SANTA CRUZ Chancellor Dean E. McHenry 64 Appointment as University Librarian 67 Starting from Scratch 68 Library Building Program 69 The New Campus Program 72 Science Library 77 Lick Observatory and UCSC 78 The Book Budget 81 Relationship with Dean McHenry 82 Library Architecture 84 Campus Planning Committee 90 Computerizing the Catalog 91 Blue Monday, 1965 97 Building the Staff 98 Wendell Simons 99 Library Budget 101 Collection Planning 107 Gifts to the University Library 108 Management Style 112 Redefining Librarianship in the UC System 115 Librarians Advisory Council 117 Student Input 118 University Extension 119 Para-Professional Staff 120 Map Collection 122 Interlibrary Loan 123 Professional Librarianship 124 Librarian Peer Review 126 Librarians Association, University of California 130 Academic Affairs 132 South Pacific Collection 132 Special Collections 146 Regional History Project 147 The Acorn Press 148 Norman Strouse and the Carlyle Collection 150 Lime Kiln Press 152 Sherwood Grover 156 George Kane 157 The Roxburghe Club 158 Developing Fine Printing Collections 159 Roy Bookenoogan 160 Wendell Hammond 161 The Preston Sawyer Collection 162 Robert Heinlein 169 Academic Planning Committee 171 Clark Kerr and the Multiversity 172 Instructional Services 178 Academic Senate 179 Budget Cuts 185 Retirement 186 Appendix Highlights in the History of the University Library 193 Index 196 i INTRODUCTION The Regional History Project conducted ten hours of interviews with Donald T. Clark in his home in Scotts Valley, California, from January, 1984, to January, 1986, as part of the University History interview series. As the first of founding Chancellor Dean E. McHenry’s academic appointments at UCSC, Clark arrived in September, 1962, and joined the small core of faculty and staff charged with building a new campus from scratch. Prior to his appointment at Santa Cruz, Clark had been at Baker Library at the Harvard Graduate School of Business for over twenty years where he had distinguished himself as a librarian and consultant. Chancellor McHenry’s invitation to participate in the Santa Cruz experiment in public higher education was a rare opportunity which Clark couldn’t pass up. He left behind his settled academic life at Harvard in favor of joining McHenry’s challenging endeavor. He was excited by the prospect of building a new library and intrigued by the plan for UCSC which emphasized undergraduate education centered in small residential colleges combined with the traditional research strengths of the University of California. His recollections illuminate the genesis of UCSC during its first decade. The interviews in this volume are organized into three sections. The first, “Early History,” includes Clark’s comments on his family history, his early years in Washington and California, and his undergraduate education at Willamette University and UC Berkeley, where he graduated in 1934 with a double major in zoology and English literature. He began his library career as a page for the Berkeley Public Library while he was a student at UC Berkeley and received a B.S. in librarianship in 1936 from Columbia University. “Baker Library, Harvard University,” focuses on Clark’s more than twenty years at the country’s largest business library. He discusses his appointment there in ii 1940 and his tenure as assistant librarian, associate librarian, and head librarian, as well as his attendance at the Business School where he obtained his MBA. He discusses the relationship between the “B School” and Baker as it evolved before and after the war and his approach to various aspects of library management. Many of the ideas he developed at Baker for serving his faculty and student clientele, which became known as “Clarkmarks,” later showed up in the University Library at UCSC. His publication of the Executive Magazine, a compilation of business journal articles, demonstrated his interest in making accessible to faculty the proliferation of research in the growing fields of business literature. His imaginative vision of the library’s mission showed itself in his efforts to foster library instruction for students and in his initiation of library exhibits integrating business and the arts. In the volume’s third and final section, “University of California, Santa Cruz,” Clark focuses on his tenure at UCSC from 1962 until his retirement in 1973. He begins by describing Chancellor McHenry’s offer to become the campus’s founding University Librarian and why he accepted the appointment. Although he was an enthusiastic recruit to the Santa Cruz experiment, Clark acknowledges his initial ignorance regarding the differences between public and private institutions. He discusses how he learned to work within UC’s bureaucracy and the constraints imposed by the system’s complex rules and budgetary formulas for building projects and staffing. His first task when he arrived was playing a leading role in the planning program for the University Library building. He describes the details of planning involved in setting the library amidst a grove of redwoods, looking, as if “the building was dropped in there by a helicopter,” and notes the care which was taken to protect the trees. John Carl Warnecke’s stunning design, with its spiral staircase and spacious inner courtyard was recognized in 1966 when the American Institute for Architects gave the University Library its Award of Merit. In 1983, after Clark’s retirement, University President David P. Gardner named the Donald T. Clark Courtyard in McHenry Library in recognition of Clark’s singular contributions as founding University Librarian. Clark worked closely with University Architect Jack Wagstaff and contributed numerous Clarkmarks in arranging the building’s interior space and iii appointments—open stacks, excellent lighting, broad aisles, easy access to books and periodicals (originally grouped together by subject), a central reference desk, and numerous thoughtfully furnished small study and reading habitats placed throughout the building. Clark hoped that the library would be a focal point for the decentralized campus, and worked to make the library a functional building with as few barriers as possible between people and books. Establishing the new library was considerably simplified by the New Campus Program, initiated by UC President Clark Kerr, in which a basic list of 50,000 titles forming a core undergraduate book collection was compiled and purchased for the three new UC campus libraries at Irvine, Santa Cruz, and San Diego. This imaginative solution to starting up three new libraries enabled Clark to spend his energies on other important library projects. His farseeing decision to develop a computerized book catalog at Santa Cruz was the first such effort in the UC system. With McHenry’s support, Clark worked tirelessly in overseeing the development of the computerized catalog, at a time when there no other libraries with which to work cooperatively in solving vexing automation problems. Faculty research needs and the undergraduate curriculum defined the library’s basic working collections; Clark’s own strong interests influenced the library’s growing personality as it was expressed in special collecting areas such as Santa Cruz local history and fine-printing and graphic arts collections. Clark describes how serendipity also played an important role in the library’s growth. When Lick Observatory’s headquarters and faculty were transferred to the Santa Cruz campus, the library unexpectedly acquired the Lick astronomical library, perhaps the finest in the United States. The establishment of the Center for South Pacific Studies, the campus’s first organized research unit, brought to the library the South Pacific Archives during the years 1965 to 1970, whose holdings are recognized as one of the finest collections in the country. Clark himself was deeply involved in enlarging this collection of books, documents, and serials in an extensive buying trip he made to the South Pacific. He narrates his fascinating experiences in visiting the region, and also provides an account of the South Pacific Center’s genesis and demise. iv Clark’s abiding interest in local history led to his efforts to build the library’s collections in Santa