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The Harmer E. Davis Transportation Library —also known as the Institute of Transportation Studies Library (ITSL), the Berkeley Transportation Library, or simply as the Transportation Library— is a transportation library at the
University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant u ...
, devoted to
transportation Transport (in British English), or transportation (in American English), is the intentional movement of humans, animals, and goods from one location to another. Modes of transport include air, land ( rail and road), water, cable, pipel ...
studies.


Facilities

The library is located on the fourth floor of McLaughlin Hall, the original UC Berkeley Engineering Building, where it serves the faculty, students, researchers and staff of the multi-campus Institute of Transportation Studies. The library has been in its present location since 1964. In earlier years the library and the Institute of Transportation Studies were situated at the UC Berkeley Field Station in
Richmond Richmond most often refers to: * Richmond, Virginia, the capital of Virginia, United States * Richmond, London, a part of London * Richmond, North Yorkshire, a town in England * Richmond, British Columbia, a city in Canada * Richmond, California, a ...
, about 8 miles north of Berkeley. In the Berkeley campus ITSL is an “Affiliated Library” one of several subject-specialist libraries that operate independently of the UC-Berkeley Main Library system. The library has three full-time professional staff, four library assistants and five temporary student employees. At present the professional staff includes the Library Director/Reference Librarian, an Electronic Resources Librarian for Contract Services, and a Technical Services and Outreach Librarian. Other permanent staff include a Library Operations Manager, Circulation Manager, Interlibrary Loans Manager, and Serials Manager. The library's website provides information on its location, staff, variations in opening hours, and latest news. The site underwent a major redesign in 2006, transforming the home page into a gateway to online sources of transportation information, featuring links to federal agency sites and to approximately 114 online journals of interest to transportation researchers. There are also links to the Institute of Transportation Studies’ four branches for information on their research, and faculty, staff and students. The library also has an official
blog A blog (a truncation of "weblog") is a discussion or informational website published on the World Wide Web consisting of discrete, often informal diary-style text entries (posts). Posts are typically displayed in reverse chronological order ...
. The library collection, begun by librarian Bev Hickok in 1948, covers all aspects of civil transportation, containing over 183,000 monographs (books, technical reports, conferences, etc.); 4,800 serials of which over 2,200 are current titles; 150,000 microfiche (primarily federally sponsored technical reports received from the National Technical Information Service); and several hundred CD-ROMs, videos and DVDs. As a U.S. federal and
State of California California is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States, located along the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the List of states and territori ...
depository the library receives material from the federal transportation agencies. It holds copies of nearly all federally sponsored reports on transportation published since 1974. Items are also regularly received from State Departments of Transportation (DOTs) and academic transportation research institutes across the USA. Much foreign material also comes in, primarily from
Canada Canada is a country in North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering over , making it the world's second-largest country by tota ...
(including French language publications from
Quebec Quebec ( ; )According to the Government of Canada, Canadian government, ''Québec'' (with the acute accent) is the official name in Canadian French and ''Quebec'' (without the accent) is the province's official name in Canadian English is ...
), Australia, and several western European countries (mainly the
United Kingdom The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the European mainland, continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotlan ...
,
France France (), officially the French Republic ( ), is a country primarily located in Western Europe. It also comprises of overseas regions and territories in the Americas and the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian Oceans. Its metropolitan ar ...
,
Germany Germany, officially the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG),, is a country in Central Europe. It is the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany lies between the Baltic and North Sea to the north and the Alps to the sou ...
,
Netherlands ) , anthem = ( en, "William of Nassau") , image_map = , map_caption = , subdivision_type = Sovereign state , subdivision_name = Kingdom of the Netherlands , established_title = Before independence , established_date = Spanish Netherl ...
, Sweden,
Finland Finland ( fi, Suomi ; sv, Finland ), officially the Republic of Finland (; ), is a Nordic country in Northern Europe. It shares land borders with Sweden to the northwest, Norway to the north, and Russia to the east, with the Gulf of Bo ...
). The collections are particularly strong in urban transportation; highway and traffic engineering; aviation (airports, airlines, aeronautics in general); rail transportation; intelligent transportation systems. It was officially renamed in 1998 in honor of the Institute of Transportation Studies’ founder, Harmer E. Davis, who died that year.


Services

The library primarily serves the faculty, students, researchers and staff of the Institute of Transportation Studies in UC Berkeley,
UC Davis The University of California, Davis (UC Davis, UCD, or Davis) is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university near Davis, California. Named a Public Ivy, it is the northernmost of the ten campuses of the Uni ...
,
UC Irvine UC may refer to: Arts and entertainment * '' University Challenge'', a popular British quiz programme airing on BBC Two ** ''University Challenge (New Zealand)'', the New Zealand version of the British programme * Universal Century, one of the t ...
, and
UCLA The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California. UCLA's academic roots were established in 1881 as a Normal school, teachers colle ...
. Service is also available to the UC Berkeley community, non-UC corporate bodies, and the general public. The library sets out a candy dish for visitors. The library serves as a center for meetings and social gatherings. It is the venue for the Institute's weekly social gathering of students and faculty each Friday afternoon during semester, and the monthly Traffic Safety Center seminar series. Recent meetings in ITSL included the Women In Transportation's annual Fall seminar; an Institute of Transportation Engineers presentation to Institute students; a lunch-meeting between ITS faculty and Association of America Railroads personnel; and a reception for a delegation from the US DOT's Research and Special Programs Administration. Special efforts are made to maintain awareness of library services to the three non-Berkeley branches of the Institute. The Outreach Librarian visits the Davis, Irvine, and Los Angeles campuses at least once each year, taking part in orientation sessions for new students and attending the annual ITS students’ conference as a speaker. Students and faculty at these campuses are encouraged to regard the Library as their own and they are supplied directly with free loans or photocopies from its collections. The Outreach Librarian is also available to open the Library at weekends for visitors from the other ITS branches, though this offer has been availed of only a few times (after all the Bay Area has plenty other attractions.) All services to non-Berkeley ITS members are supplied free. The library also provides a very efficient and busy interlibrary loan service. An average of 150 items (monographs, audiovisuals and photocopies) are supplied each month. Free service is provided to transportation research bodies in the state of California. The library is a major source of cataloging for publications in transportation research. In addition to creating bibliographic records for monographs we produce a large number of analytics (journal and magazine articles, individual conference papers for which we have provided full cataloging). Analytics have been created for about 103,000 articles and papers. Cataloging has been done online since 1979 and the library's cataloging staff are among the most prolific contributors of transportation cataloging to the OCLC WorldCat database. Average production per month is 600 records for monographs and 450 records for analytics. The catalog records appear in the University of California'
Melvyl
online catalog, OCLC'

database, and th
TRIS
database. Regarding TRIS, the Library is a contributor of bibliographic records to the Transportation Research Board's TLIB project. Since 1985 bibliographic records for journal articles, and until very recently monographs, were sent free of charge to TLIB for inclusion in TRIS.


Special projects

*PATH Database (1987-2005) The Library developed the PATH database, the world's largest online database on intelligent transportation systems. Launched in 1987 and funded by the California PATH Program, it contained over 28,000 fully abstracted records and grew by the addition of between 250 and 300 records per month. PATH Database was available free on the Web before funding was terminated in 2005. Though PATH is no more, its contents survive as part of TRIS (Transportation Research Information Services, a transportation database maintained by the Transportation Research Board in Washington, D.C.) *California Local Technical Assistance Program (LTAP) As part of its LTAP commitment, the Library provides specialized reference service and circulates materials free of charge to California and other transportation agencies at the local level. Many items available for distribution are also referenced in a Resources Guide maintained by project staff. Additionally, Library professional staff write bibliographies which appear in Tech Transfer. *Caltrans/TRIS (C/TRIS) abstracting project. This LTAP project provides specialized cataloging and abstracting for research reports sponsored by California Department of Transportation (Caltrans). Records generated are submitted directly to the Transportation Research Board for inclusion in its national TRIS Database. This ensures that Caltrans research reports are listed in TRIS database in a timely manner. *B/TRIS indexing project. The Library's B/TRIS project, undertaken in cooperation with the Transportation Research Board (TRB), began operation in February 2001. In accordance with our agreement, Library staff index and abstract periodical articles from specific journal titles for direct input into TRB's TRIS Database. Five Library and ITS Berkeley staff are currently working on this project under the supervision of Seyem Petrites. *Calendar projects. With its neighbor library th
Water Resources Collections and Archives
ITSL has for several years been jointly producing calendars with water and transportation themes featuring historic photographs of the Bay Area. The calendars are used to market and promote ITSL services, with copies distributed gratis to University of California engineering faculty and local, state and national transportation administrators and researchers. The calendars are also available for purchase as part of the Library's ongoing fundraising efforts. The 2006 calendar departs from the usual themes of bridges and ferries. Titled "Futuristics", it features vintage illustrations of innovative transportation ideas from bygone decades. *Transportation Futuristics exhibit. The illustrations for the latest ITSL/WRCA calendar are drawn from a
exhibit
featuring weird and wonderful transportation ideas from the past. The exhibit was assembled from items in the Transportation Library's collections.


References


External links


ITSL official websiteThe official ITSL blogInteractive map of UC Berkeley campus
{{Authority control University and college academic libraries in the United States University of California, Berkeley buildings Transportation in California Libraries in Alameda County, California Library buildings completed in 1964