Evolution of the UCLA Library System

Education & Psychology Library

The Education & Psychology Library, established in the early 1960s, was housed on the third floor of the Powell Library building. This library was closed in 1991 when libraries were consolidated, and the bulk of its collections was split between the Research Library (education) and the Biomedical Library (psychology).

University Research Library (now Charles E. Young Research Library)

In 1962, the University broke ground to build the University Research Library, now called the Charles E. Young Research Library. The Research Library was completed in two stages: Unit I opened in 1964 and Unit 2 in 1970. The original plans called for a Unit 3, but Unit 3 was never built. Instead, the Powell Library building grew the newly established undergraduate library, the College Library.

Richard C. Rudolph East Asian Library

The Richard C. Rudolph East Asian Library, originally called the Oriental Library, is housed within the Research Library. When Unit 2 was completed, the Public Affairs Service opened on the bottom floor. Public Affairs Service eventually merged with the Map Library (which started in the early 1960s and was housed in Bunche Hall) and was renamed Maps and Government Information. Maps and Government Information has since merged with the Young Research Library reference department and was renamed Collections, Research and Instructional Services (CRIS).

Science Libraries

The science libraries were originally department libraries for the faculty. After Powell became the University Librarian in 1944, he and assistant director Robert Vosper worked to bring these department libraries into a "centralized pattern." These included the Engineering Library, then as now in Boelter Hall, and the Biomedical Library, now named after the first biomedical librarian Louise M. Darling. Chemistry, Physics, and Geology and Geophysics had separate libraries, which were all expanded in 1962. In the early 1960s, Engineering became the Engineering and Mathematical Sciences Library. Later, after the 1990s administrative consolidation (in which Geology/Geophysics and Chemistry were left as separate "collections"), the name of the Engineering and Mathematical Sciences Library was changed to the Science and Engineering Library (SEL).

Law Library

Shortly after the Law Library began in 1949, it was pulled out of the library system. However, it was returned to the system when Franklin D. Murphy became chancellor in 1960. Later, it was pulled out of the library system again, and it today remains under the School of Law. Now called the Hugh and Hazel Darling Law Library, it was renovated and expanded in 1998.

Eugene and Maxine Rosenfeld Management Library

The Eugene and Maxine Rosenfeld Management Library began as the Business Library in 1961-62. In the 1990s, it became part of Anderson Computing and Information Services; however, the head still reports to Library administration.

Arts Libraries

The Arts libraries — Art, Music, Theater Arts, and Architecture — all began in the early 1960s after the construction of the Research Library. In the consolidation of the 1990s, Theater Arts and Architecture merged into the Art Library, with Music still physically separate in Schoenberg Hall but administratively part of the Arts Library.

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Sources:

Vosper, Robert. 1994. Interview by Dale E. Treleven. Transcript. Libraries and the Inquiring Mind: Oral History Transcript 1990-1991. Oral History Program, UCLA

UCLA Librarian, Vol. 50, No. 1 (Spring 1998), pp 8-10

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