The UCLA Library has received the largest single gift for collections in its history, $5 million from the Arcadia Fund. Gift funds will be to support efforts to further develop, preserve, and make accessible its world-class collections.
The gift is intended to support transformative changes in collections and the services that support them. Among the possibilities under discussion are projects that build new collections, enhance existing ones, repurpose already digitized materials, expand digitization efforts into new areas of concentration, and explore and develop new types of recorded knowledge.
Funds may also be used to enhance end-user discovery of UCLA Library holdings, encourage the use of materials in novel ways, leverage new technology to attract broader audiences to use them in instruction and scholarship, and manage and make accessible scholarship in new formats. Arcadia's key mission is the preservation of cultural knowledge and materials and environmental conservation. This includes near-extinct languages, rare historical archives and museum-quality artifacts, and the protection of ecosystems and environments threatened with extinction.
Arcadia has made several major donations to the UCLA Library to support the Center for Primary Research and Training in the Charles E. Young Research Library Department of Special Collections, the most recent being a significant gift in 2008 to the endowment supporting the program.