A Chicano Studies Library

In the 1960s Chicana/o/x students did not see themselves in the main Berkeley library despite the fact that it was regarded as one of the finest libraries in the nation. In their classrooms and in the publications they read, their culture and experience were summed up as problems: for example, the problem of migrant labor or the problem of Spanish speaking children in schools. Collecting materials to counter that perspective was essential. With support from the emerging Chicano Studies Program, students began to develop a Chicano Studies library. They collected materials from community events and brought them to a small room in Dwinelle Hall that became the library. The library was initially composed of a few bookshelves and vertical files that contained student papers, local community bulletins, and ephemera. A small card file and shelf list helped visitors identify and find materials.

Professor Oswaldo Asturias was the first coordinator of La Raza Studies at UC Berkeley. Asturias asked author Lucha Corpi, who was a work study student at the time, to devote part of her working hours to identifying and obtaining books for the library. According to an early departmental org chart, Corpi became the library’s first Coordinator in 1971. As the collection grew and became more well known on campus, students began to apply to work at the library. Student workers welcomed library visitors at a small desk and helped them locate materials while also working on specific tasks such as compiling bibliographies, assisting with collection development, materials processing and searching for relevant materials across the Berkeley libraries system. In 1972, architecture student Jose Antonio Arce became Coordinator and played a major role in shaping how materials would be classified. Arce worked closely with John Gonzales, another student worker, who was also the first archivist of the Chicano Studies Program. Gonzales collected newspapers, journals and bulletins and developed what became an internationally sought after Latino serial collection, He also compiled several published bibliographies and documented the early history of the Chicano Studies program.

In 1973, anthropology student Richard Chabrán began working at the library after Arce suggested he join their team. Chabrán was tasked with caring for the serials collection. Chabrán remembers that “This [work] was really important for me because I came to realize that those newspapers represented the voices of communities across the country that you don't often hear or read about. They were an education for me.” Chabrán originally intended to become an anthropologist, but he was drawn into librarianship through working at the Chicano Studies Library. Chabrán explains that working at the library was “an opportunity to acknowledge that I had not learned the history of my people the way I thought it should be taught. [It was] an opportunity to develop that history, and to develop those resources, so that not just my community, but the world would know it. That was a big inspiration for me. I wanted to become a librarian, but it was with a very particular purpose.” Chabrán obtained his master’s degree in Library and Information science from UC Berkeley’s School of Library and Information Studies and became Coordinator in 1975. Chábran led many pivotal projects that put the Chicano Studies Library on the map as one of the nation’s leading Chicana/o/x collections. In recognition of his work and the growing significance of the library, faculty from the Chicano Studies Program successfully petitioned the university administration to formalize and officially recognize the coordinator position in 1977. When Chabrán left the library in 1979, librarians Francisco García-Ayvens (Coordinator from 1980-1984) and Lillian Castillo-Speed (Coordinator from 1984-1992, Head of the Ethnic Studies library and Chicano Studies Librarian from 1992-today) built on the work that he and others started.

Throughout the 70s and 80s, the Chicano Studies Library continued to grow, housing materials and cultivating programs that were unavailable elsewhere. Library staff and faculty collected posters, ephemera and bulletins-- materials that were important to Chicana/o/x communities but not always valued by other kinds of libraries. Library staff were not limited by or concerned with previous conceptions of what a library should be. The entire library represented a world that was missing in other libraries and on campus. Staff were empowered to act on behalf of wider communities as part of a collective struggle.