UC San Diego Campus & San Diego Community Information: Library Collections

• Lists and describes (and points to online full-text, when available) materials in the library's collections, including San Diego government publications, campus publications, archived websites for campus and the city, films, videos, and much more.
• The default "Articles, Books & More" search box searches the holdings of libraries at all 10 UC campuses, as well references to resources beyond the UC that you may be able to request via Interlibrary Loan service.
• You can narrow your search by things like Resource Type (e.g., government documents), Available Online, and other aspects using the filters on the left side of your results.
• You can also choose to EXCLUDE categories of resources using filters, or limit by the desired creation date(s).
• The library does have a rather large collection of San Diego government document publications in print format. To narrow your search to these items, click of the "Location" Filter option and select the locations that include "Documents SD" in their description and click Apply Filters. Hover over a location name and select the checkbox that appears. You can select more than one location as you are setting up your filter.

Looking for historical campus information? Start with the Library's Digital Collections website:

UC San Diego History Digital Collections:

This gathering of digital collections includes digitized student newspapers, campus news releases, oral histories, photographs, and more. This link points to the large overarching collection that brings together many more focused collections. Search by keywords or proper names to locate sources from across all our themed collections on UC San Diego history.

For example: "Lumumba Zapata" | Angela Davis | Academic Plan | Affirmative Action | Wages | Campus (planning OR development) | food insecurity | environmental justice

Use the left menu to limit search results by decade, format, or collection

You can also search or browse the more focused UC San Diego History collections directly (we recommend a mix of broad searching, and focused browsing).

Below are selected digital collections that may be most relevant to your class themes: 

Tell Us How UC It

• Includes a timeline of historical and more recent events on campus. Developed "to foster and contextualize conversations regarding incidents targeting specific underrepresented groups on our campus."

UCSD Racial Tension Spring 2010 Web Archive

• A collection of news articles, videos, and blogs reporting on and reacting to a series of racially-charged incidents that occurred at UCSD, especially an incident in Geisel Library, in Spring 2010. Some articles detail actions taken by student groups and the University to address campus climate and diversity-related concerns following the events.
• This collection is gathered by the UC San Diego Library, and preserved and made available via the Internet Archive's Archive-It service. Researchers may wish to browse and search other sites preserved with Archive-It either by UC San Diego or other schools and organizations.

UC San Diego Archived Websites 

• A searchable collection of archived UC San Diego websites, including those documenting campus administration and news, the various colleges' websites, and selected departmental and programmatic pages, including the Stuart Collection and Women's Center.

Online Archive of California

• Describes primary source collections maintained by libraries, archives, historical societies, and museums throughout California and collections maintained by the 10 University of California campuses.

Calisphere

• Includes photographs, documents, letters, artwork, diaries, oral histories, films, advertisements, musical recordings, and more. Items digitized and contributed by all 10 campuses of the University of California and other institutions in California.

UC History - Primary Sources

• Includes links to select digital collections, as well as links to other UC libraries' websites to explore further.

Most of the digitized campus historical sources come from Special Collections & Archives. There are also a great many sources documenting campus history (any many other topics!) that we have not yet digitized, and are available only for use in the Special Collections & Archives reading room (SC&A) on the main floor of the Geisel Library.

We strongly encourage DOC 3/CCE 3 students to search digitized historical sources first, using the Library's Digital Collections highlighted elsewhere on this page. 

• Digitized sources may answer your questions and reduce need for visiting in person to work with original copies.
• The SC&A reading room is small and our hours are limited to M-F, 9-5, so the library simply cannot accommodate all of the DOC/CCE students dropping in as a first step in their research.
• Navigating archival collections requires more time and planning than other kinds of library research, and may not be required or relevant for all research topics (they may not be current enough for your topic/research question, for example).
• The digitized collections -- like news releases or student newspaper articles -- may help you pinpoint names, dates, committees, departments, or other details that will be essential for navigating the physical archival collections, should you chose to do so.

Should you decide to visit SC&A, be sure to review the website carefully to ensure you are prepared to work in this environment, and that you carefully read and understand the SC&A Services and policies to familiarize yourself with the process and requirements for accessing these original documents and materials.  

• Everyone who uses SC&A must register and place requests in advance - we store materials in secure, environmentally controlled spaces.
  • Some collections are stored offsite and require you request up to 2-3 weeks in advance of your visit.
  • Other collections are readily available onsite, but do still require registering and placing requests in our system before accessing these materials.
• Special Collections materials are described in UC Library Search.
• Additionally, we create inventories of large archival collections, or "finding aids," to describe the contents of the physical archival collections in more detail. Search or browse finding aids on the SC&A website