UC Berkeley Campus between 1898 and 1905 (photo courtesy of the Library of Congress)
Special Event

100th Birthday Celebration

Wednesday, September 12, 2018
4:30 pm
Remote video URL

In 1918 — 100 years ago — UC Berkeley began a full-time program in library science.

Join us to celebrate the 100-year history of the School of Information, School of Information Management and Systems, School of Library and Information Studies, and School of Librarianship.

A special lecture will look back at the School’s history from its origins in library science to today, followed by a festive reception and birthday cake.

Please RSVP below.

Featured Speakers

AnnaLee Saxenian
Dean, UC Berkeley School of Information

Michael Buckland
Professor Emeritus

Jeff MacKie-Mason
University Librarian, Chief Digital Scholarship Officer, and Professor

Introduction
Dean AnnaLee Saxenian

A Brief History of the School’s Founding
Michael Buckland

Professor Buckland will share the history of the founding of the School of Librarianship and an overview of the School’s first fifty years.

Keynote: The Second Gutenberg Revolution: Today is the First Day of the Next Six Hundred Years
Jeff MacKie-Mason

The introduction of the moveable type printing press to the West discontinuously altered two information technology fundamentals. From these two rather simple changes followed 600 years of revolutionary transformation in culture, science, and governance. The development of digital networked communications has discontinuously altered the same two fundamentals, as well as a third which amplifies the disruption. Thus, though 50 or so years into the digital networked communications revolution, we are still in the very early days of the Second Gutenberg Revolution, likely to effect greater transformation than we saw in the last 600 years.

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AnnaLee Saxenian (Anno) is professor and dean of UC Berkeley’s School of Information and has a joint faculty appointment with the Department of City and Regional Planning. Her latest book, The New Argonauts: Regional Advantage in a Global Economy (Harvard University Press, 2006) explores how and why immigrant engineers from Silicon Valley are transferring their technology entrepreneurship to emerging regions in their home countries — Taiwan, Israel, China and India in particular — and launching companies far from established centers of skill and technology. The “brain drain,” she argues, has now become “brain circulation” — a powerful economic force for the development of formerly peripheral regions that is sparking profound transformations in the global economy. Saxenian is also author of the widely acclaimed Regional Advantage: Culture and Competition in Silicon Valley and Route 128 (Harvard University Press, 1994). Other publications include Silicon Valley’s New Immigrant  Entrepreneurs (Public Policy Institute of California, 1999), and Local and Global Networks of Immigrant Professionals in Silicon Valley (PPIC, 2002). She holds a Ph.D. in political science from MIT, a master’s in regional planning from UC Berkeley, and a B.A. in economics from Williams College.

Michael Buckland is emeritus professor in the School of Information and co-director of the Electronic Cultural Atlas Initiative. He grew up in England and studied history at Oxford and librarianship at Sheffield University. He trained at the Bodleian Library in Oxford and moved to the University of Lancaster Library in 1965. In 1972, Buckland moved to the United States to be Assistant Director of Libraries for Technical Services at Purdue University Libraries before becoming Dean of the School of Library and Information Studies at Berkeley from 1976 to 1984. He served from 1983 to 1987 as Assistant Vice President for Library Plans and Policies for the nine campuses of the University of California. Professor Buckland's interests include bibliography, library services, search and discovery, cultural heritage, and the history and theory of documentation.

Jeffrey K. MacKie-Mason is the University Librarian and Chief Digital Scholarship Officer, University of California, Berkeley, and a professor in the UC Berkeley School of Information and the Department of Economics. Formerly he was the dean of the School of Information, University of Michigan. At Michigan, he was also the Arthur W. Burks Professor of Information and Computer Science, and a professor of economics and public policy. He was the founding director of STIET (a research program for Socio-Technical Infrastructure for Electronic Transactions). He is passionate about public universities, where he has spent his entire career.

Last updated: September 7, 2023