Water Resources Collections and Archives

Water Resources Collections and Archives
Established 1958
Location Riverside, San Bernardino, California
Access and use
Population served University of California, State of California, and the public.
Website http://library.ucr.edu/wrca/

The Water Resources Collections and Archives (formerly known as the Water Resources Center Archives) (WRCA) is located on the campus of the University of California Riverside (UCR), and is jointly administered by the UCR College of Natural and Agricultural Sciences (CNAS) and the UCR Libraries. WRCA was part of the University of California Center for Water Resources (WRC) that was established and funded in 1957 by a special act of the California State Legislature and was designated the California Water Research Institute by a federal act in 1964.

WRCA was formed in 1958 as the research component of WRC. At that time, the WRC was a system wide unit that was administered by the University of California Office of the President, Division of Agriculture and Natural Resources (ANR).

WRCA is both an archive with unpublished manuscript collections and a library with published materials. The collection was established to collect unique, hard-to-find, technical report materials pertaining to all aspects of water resources and supply in California an the American West, as well as to serve as a resource for the University of California and the people of the state. The collection also contains some materials pertaining to water resources on the national and international level.

Although WRCA staff began collecting materials in 1958, the library portion of the collection includes select materials dating from the late 19th century, with exceptional strength in its coverage of California water history from the early 1900s to the present. This extensive coverage is due to the generous donations of archival and print materials from UC professors, hydrologists, the staff of various government agencies and private donors.

On October 2, 2009, ANR announced[1] that WRCA would have a "new academic home" by June 30, 2010 and that WRC would close on December 31, 2009. A public and political outcry in support of WRCA staff, services, and collections to remain funded at the UC Berkeley campus emerged following the ANR announcement.[2][3]

On July 16, 2010, ANR announced that WRCA would move to southern California, relocating its valuable research collection to UC Riverside, and entering into a collaborative partnership with the Water Resources Institute at CSU San Bernardino.[4]

Collections

WRCA is the premier library of its kind in the United States, specifically collecting contemporary and historic material, technical reports, and gray literature on water resources development in California and the West. The collection includes national and international material as well. Reports, pamphlets, and unpublished materials from federal, state and local government agencies, other federal Water Research Institutes, non-governmental organizations and consultants form the heart of the collection. WRCA's archival materials are discoverable in the Online Archive of California. WRCA's collection is cataloged in OCLC and is searchable in UC Riverside's Scotty catalog and in the University of California's Melvyl catalog.

The collection consists of more than 200,000 cataloged reports and approximately 2,200 serial items. WRCA currently receives more than 2,600 specialized newsletters and annual reports published by water or irrigation districts, non-profit organizations, water associations and federal agencies. The collection includes more than 6,200 archival maps and more than 600 films. WRCA also actively maintains more than 200 unique manuscript collections, included in these materials are more than 25,000 unique photographs (chiefly black & white) and approximately 45,000 coastal aerial photographs.

WRCA's manuscript collections [5] include materials from engineers and agencies influential in California's water infrastructure (engineering, groundwater, environmental, etc.). Some highlights include the papers of engineers and attorneys such as Joseph B. Lippincott, Hans Albert Einstein, Frank Adams, Charles Derleth, John S. Eastwood, John D. Galloway, Sidney T. Harding, Walter L. Huber, Edward Hyatt, Joe W. Johnson, Robert Kelley, Bernard Etcheverry, Harvey Oren Banks, Milton N. Nathanson, Luna Leopold and Murrough P. O'Brien, amongst others. WRCA also holds institutional and legal records from numerous organizations, including Mono Lake Committee, California Department of Water Resources, East Bay Municipal Utilities District, and the Berkeley Creeks Task Force.

The collection overall is particularly strong in river and creek restoration (chiefly specific to the San Francisco Bay Area), Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, San Francisco Bay, California Aqueduct, Los Angeles Aqueduct, Owens Valley, California legislation and policy, and dam construction and removal.

Initiatives

WRCA has developed numerous initiatives that use cutting edge tools to preserve and deliver content to UC and the California water community.

Publications utilizing WRCA collections

In addition to supporting faculty and graduate work for the University of California, WRCA's services and materials have been influential and utilized in numerous publications and films. The following is a small representation of these materials:

References

Further reading

External links

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