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Friday, February 27, 1998

Community Briefs

Berkeley digitizes past documents of the West

The history of the American West will soon be available on a computer screen.

Documents at UC Berkeley's Phoebe Apperson Hearst Museum of Anthropology, which are frail and crumbling, will be digitized to save them for the future. A $23,000 grant from the National Center for Preservation Technology and Training will fund the project.

Now, instead of handling the fragile documents, researchers will see them on a computer screen or on printouts that may be easier to use than the original.

"Many of these are newspaper clippings, typed manuscripts and other documents collected in the early 20th century. There are pencil sketches that can smudge, and the photos sometimes have no negatives," said Rosemary Joyce, the museum director.

Researchers visit the museum to view the documents which range from Native American studies and history to ethnobotany.

"In some cases, these are the only remaining records of the communities that flourished prior to contact with other peoples," said Joyce.

Included in the records are field reports from a Depression-era anthropological survey of Orange County funded by the Federal Works Progress Administration.

The National Center for Preservation Technology and Training is a division of the National Park Service which focuses on technical issues in the preservation of cultural resources.

Faculty library opens doors to undergrads

The UCLA Law School just opened up its faculty library to third-year students. Because of the delays in the construction of the new law library, administrators decided to open up the smaller facility to students who would not have access to the new library.

The faculty library is not staffed. Third-year law students were given keys to the room, which has about 30 seats, computer terminals and copies of court case legal collections.

They may use the room during building hours, from 7 a.m. to 12 midnight every day.

American Airlines sells cheap fare to students

American Airlines has been offering college students discounts up to 65 percent on flights for spring break. Students must purchase tickets now in order to qualify for the low travel fares.

Students may book their flights on-line, through American Airlines or a travel agent. Flight prices range from $109 to $259 round trip, depending on the flight distance. Special fares only apply to flights within the United States, excluding Alaska and Hawaii. All flights require a 14-day advance purchase in order to travel between Feb. 23 and April 16.

Other specials offered to college students by American Airlines are announced via e-mail. Students who log on to the site and sign up to receive promotional announcements can win six round-trip coach tickets for themselves and five friends. The site address is www.aa.com/college.

Fowler benefits from Getty Grant Program

The UCLA Fowler Museum of Cultural History has received a $130,000 grant from the Getty Grant Program. The grant money will help fund publications about non-Western textile studies.

"Among the world's art forms, clothing traditions are one of those most intimately tied to fundamental issues of identity," Doran H. Ross, the Fowler Museum's director, said.

The Fowler Museum already publishes highly regarded scholarship on non-Western textile studies. Its collective includes more than 10,000 items from two millennia and five continents.

Compiled from Daily Bruin staff reports.

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