And just
when you thought you’d read every book in the library!
In February, UCSD Libraries will celebrate the acquisition of volume
number 3 million.
The Shepherd of Banbury’s Rules to Judge
of the Changes of the Weather by John Claridge will be housed in
Special Collections
along with 250,000 other volumes and 38 million manuscripts. Published
in London in 1744, the 64-page book contains folk wisdom about the
weather.
“
A swarm of bees in May /
Is worth a load of hay;
A swarm of bees in June /
Is worth a silver spoon.”
Perhaps
it’s not too appropriate for a May-gray day in La Jolla but
it’s
a valuable addition to Kenneth E. Hill’s meteorology collection donated
by Dorothy V. Hill in late 2003. Hill, who died in 2001, was one of the library’s
most generous donors, best known for his collection of books about early voyages
of exploration and discovery in the Pacific, which he donated in 1974.
That year the libraries also celebrated their first million volumes
when
they acquired John Ogilby’s America; Being the Latest, and
Most Accurate Description of the New World; London, 1671. Volume
number 2 million, the Liber
Chronicarum (or the Nuremberg Chronicle), Nuremberg, 1493, was
added in February 1992. The current annual acquisitions budget for the
UCSD Libraries is $7.6 million. |
