Fabiola Kesselmann volunteered at the Clark Library from January 27-March 14, 2025. A recent graduate from Markgrafen Gymnasium Durlach (near Karlsruhe, Germany), she is taking a gap year that makes us all jealous. Before coming to the library, she spent a few weeks in Tokyo on a Japanese language course and is soon on…

by UCLA PhD candidate & student staff Erin Severson “NEAR THIS SPOT CAPT. JAMES COOK MET HIS DEATH FEBRUARY 14, 1779” — A brick laid in the waters of Kealakekua Bay, Kona district, Hawaiʻi  Some people will spend today celebrating the Feast of Saint Valentine. Some will tactfully (or begrudgingly) refrain. I will spend the…

By Miranda Hoegberg, UCLA Graduate Student and former Clark Reading Room Assistant Despite the season, it doesn’t feel much like Halloween at the Clark. If you’ve been to visit our sun-soaked library and grounds, you know the setting is pretty idyllic. But back in the stacks, the light dims, the temperature drops, and if you…

By Stephanie Geller, UCLA MLIS student, and Clark Technical Services Intern Every library should audit its collections regularly, particularly areas that are not used as frequently as others. That was the impetus for a recent project to go through, reorganize, and bring to light some of the over-sized items hidden away in flat storage map…

by Avianna Wooten, UCLA History major and Clark Library Public Services Assistant What is Mezzotint? The term itself hints at its meaning; in Italian mezza translates into “half’ and tinta into “tone”. Mezzotint is a form of printmaking that produces halftones or a subtle shading of darkness within prints. The Labor: Transforming Darkness into light…

Michael R. Thompson January 8, 1940-August 10, 2018 by Bruce Whiteman, Clark Head Librarian Emeritus Michael Thompson, the Los Angeles-based antiquarian bookseller, died recently at seventy-eight. Michael had been in poor health for some time. All the same, his death came as a shock, to me and to his many friends and colleagues. Others will…

by Avianna Wooten, UCLA History Major and Student Staff Member at the Clark The Clark has recently added Diane Jacobs’s NOURISH, All our Relations to its Fine Press Collection. Nourish is an unbound artist book comprising eight twice-folded folios, built-in sculptures, and a collapsible bamboo box for housing. The book was created through a meticulous…

It’s time for #ColorOurCollections again! For the third year in a row, the New York Academy of Medicine Library has hosted the “Color Our Collections” event, where special collections libraries create coloring books for patrons to enjoy. Here’s a brief description from NYAM’s website: “From February 5-9, 2018, libraries, archives, and other cultural institutions around…

For John Milton, “Books are not absolutely dead things, but doe contain a potencie of life in them” (Areopagitica, 1644). This “potencie” often manifests itself in the traces of a book’s social life: in marginalia, inscriptions, doodles, markings, and the like. These are signs of books’ use and abuse by readers and owners, the evidence…