In the basement of Young Research Library, there is a place
where books are pieces of history.
A catalogue from the early 1900s touts masks depicting
stereotypes of ethnic groups and races: Italians, Japanese,
Jews.
The pages of another text, faded to gray-gold tones, are filled
with detailed drawings of what ancient Roman temples and other
sites looked like in 1569, when the book was printed.
The Special Collections Department at UCLA houses about 335,000
unique books, along with 30 million original manuscripts and 5
million photographs, said rare books librarian Cristina
Favretto.
Books and other materials are considered “rare” for
a variety of reasons. Some were printed centuries ago, while others
are published more recently but in limited numbers.
Some, like the catalogue of masks, are items people usually
throw out, but ones that years down the line become precious
because they reveal something about what life was like in an
earlier time.
Special care is taken to preserve Special Collections books,
which are kept in dark places with a humidity of about 50 percent
and a temperature around 62 degrees, Favretto said.
While researchers must treat the materials carefully, the
collections are open to the public.
Users cannot check the books out, but can examine their content
and turn their pages in a reading room with space for 12.
The value of rare items varies widely, Favretto said. Sometimes
she finds a great book for $15. Other books, often paid for by
non-UCLA funding, can hit the $20,000 range, she added.
For Favretto, working with rare collections is a way to explore
history, to understand different eras by examining and reading the
materials people used to read.
“I love books … the discoveries I’m able to make,
and the wonderful things I’m able to learn from the arcane
and abstruse,” she said.
As she flipped through the illustrations of Roman antiquities,
Favretto remarked that what struck her most was the fact that while
16th-century Italians were living their everyday lives among these
ancient structures. The book’s artist understood their
importance and documented them in depth, with the monuments’
inscriptions included.
In the 18th and 19th centuries, women who had the chance to
travel often wrote memoirs, writing about the brief time they spent
outside the home in which they spent most of their days,
restricted, Favretto said.
She pulled out a book that had a dark-green, marbled cover with
gold stamping.
Turning the pages, Favretto noted that the text was a parody of
the travel diaries, poking fun at women’s desire to tell
their stories.
“I wanted to document that there was kind of a feeling
that women should be made fun of,” Favretto said.
Then, pointing to the catalog of masks, she added, “You
have to collect the stuff that’s painful and hard to look at,
because otherwise how are we going to document it?”