Partial Restoration

You'd have to be a really faithful reader of this blog and someone with a very good memory to recall our postings from back in 2023 about UC-Berkeley's attempt to close an anthropology library. It resulted in an occupation by students and a promise of some kind of reading room.* Two years later, we have a follow-up:

From the Daily Cal: UC Berkeley’s anthropology department opened the refurbished Constance Chiang Pan Anthropology Reading Room, or CCPARR, through a gift from anthropology and economics alumna Constance Chiang Pan. Due to budget cuts, campus closed the original Anthropology Library as a circulating library in January 2023, which was considered a “big loss” for the campus and department, according to anthropology department chair Sabrina Agarwal... The initial announcement about the library’s closure in 2023 led to a months-long occupation and protest from students and faculty. Eventually, campus and then-Chancellor Carol Christ allowed the department of anthropology to keep the space to create a reading room...

It took almost eight months for the library staff to help retain and reorganize the “invaluable” collection of 20,000 historical anthropological volumes, selection of emeriti books and the UC Berkeley Folklore Archive that was saved by campus’s smaller renovation funds, according to Agarwal. The other 10,000 to 15,000 books were placed in another campus library or can be obtained at the Northern Regional Library Facility, where UC Berkeley archives are stored...

Full story at https://www.dailycal.org/news/campus/following-spring-2023-protests-anthropology-library-reopens-as-constance-chiang-pan-reading-room/article_8d9d0b46-c8e7-4a32-ad05-bfc7240478e8.html. 

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*https://uclafacultyassociation.blogspot.com/2023/05/special-libraries-at-berkeley-going.html.