The University of California Herbaria Libraries

         
   
ABOUT THE LIBRARIES

The libraries of the University and Jepson Herbaria have been combined. The Jepson library was founded in 1950 with renowned botanist Willis Linn Jepson's extensive personal botanical library that contains literature considered rare in his time, let alone the present day. The collection has grown with gradual acquisitions and donations from former Curators and associates of the Jepson Herbarium (including Rimo Bacigalupi, Lincoln Constance, and Mary Bowerman). It is a full-scale research library with a collection that is both broad and deep in scope.

The geographic scope of the library is world-wide, but the main focus is California. Of particular value are early California journals such as the Bulletins of the California Academy of Sciences, many of which were lost at the Academy during the San Francisco earthquake and fires of 1906. Rare publications for California botany such as Erythea, Zoe, and Jepson's Flora of Middle California are critical resources that have been extensively used in the production of the a new edition of the standard flora for California, The Jepson Manual that was published in December 2011.

The library collection contains over 10000 volumes, a rare book collection, a reprint collection, and over 150 botanical periodicals. The collection includes general botanical works, taxonomic monographs, an extensive flora collection, biographies of botanists and other naturalists, and a small collection of gardening and ethnobotanical books. The collection does not circulate but is available to members of the public for use in our reading room.

VISITORS

This is an internal research collection. The library is open only to in-house staff, students working under the sponsorship of the Herbaria, and visiting researchers. New visiting researchers need to make an appointment with Amy Kasameyer to become familiar with the idiosyncrasies of filing in the library. Outside students or members of the general public that want to look at a book currently checked out from the BioScience Library to the Herbaria Library must request a recall from the BioScience Library

If you have questions, please contact Amy Kasameyer.

BOOKS

Books may not be taken out of the Herbarium proper, i.e., rooms keyed with the Herbarium master key. Amy Kasameyer has the keys to the locked cases. Andrew Doran has a spare key. If you need to use a book at your desk for a short period of time, please leave a drop tag in its place.

JOURNALS

Journals may not be taken out of the library except to the photocopy machine in room 1001.

MAPS

Maps and atlases may not be taken out of the library. Please put a droptag in the file when you take out a map so that you can refile it when you are done studying it.

WIRELESS

Let us know if you want guest access to the AirBears campus wireless network.