Transportation Library, UC Berkeley
Encyclopedia
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 library at the University of California, Berkeley
, devoted to transportation studies. Officially named in 1998 for the Institute of Transportation Studies’ founder, it is the oldest transportation library in the United States
, having been established in 1948 just after the foundation of the Institute itself.
The ITSL is currently the third largest such library as well, surpassed only by the United States Department of Transportation
library in Washington D.C. and the Transportation Library of Northwestern University
in Evanston, Illinois
. It remains the largest west of the Mississippi
.
, 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
.
The library’s collection holdings date back to 1948 and before. The collection 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 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
(including French language publications from Quebec
), Australia
, and several western European countries (mainly the United Kingdom
, France
, Germany
, Netherlands
, Sweden
, Finland
). The collections are particularly strong in urban transportation; highway and traffic engineering; aviation (airports, airlines, aeronautics in general); rail transportation; intelligent transportation system
s.
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’s Melvyl online catalog, OCLC’s WorldCat database, and the 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.
University of California, Berkeley
The University of California, Berkeley , is a teaching and research university established in 1868 and located in Berkeley, California, USA...
, devoted to transportation studies. Officially named in 1998 for the Institute of Transportation Studies’ founder, it is the oldest transportation library in the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
, having been established in 1948 just after the foundation of the Institute itself.
The ITSL is currently the third largest such library as well, surpassed only by the United States Department of Transportation
United States Department of Transportation
The United States Department of Transportation is a federal Cabinet department of the United States government concerned with transportation. It was established by an act of Congress on October 15, 1966, and began operation on April 1, 1967...
library in Washington D.C. and the Transportation Library of Northwestern University
Northwestern University
Northwestern University is a private research university in Evanston and Chicago, Illinois, USA. Northwestern has eleven undergraduate, graduate, and professional schools offering 124 undergraduate degrees and 145 graduate and professional degrees....
in Evanston, Illinois
Evanston, Illinois
Evanston is a suburban municipality in Cook County, Illinois 12 miles north of downtown Chicago, bordering Chicago to the south, Skokie to the west, and Wilmette to the north, with an estimated population of 74,360 as of 2003. It is one of the North Shore communities that adjoin Lake Michigan...
. It remains the largest west of the Mississippi
Mississippi River
The Mississippi River is the largest river system in North America. Flowing entirely in the United States, this river rises in western Minnesota and meanders slowly southwards for to the Mississippi River Delta at the Gulf of Mexico. With its many tributaries, the Mississippi's watershed drains...
.
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 RichmondRichmond, California
Richmond is a city in western Contra Costa County, California, United States. The city was incorporated on August 7, 1905. It is located in the East Bay, part of the San Francisco Bay Area. It is a residential inner suburb of San Francisco, as well as the site of heavy industry, which has been...
, about 8 miles north of Berkeley
Berkeley, California
Berkeley is a city on the east shore of the San Francisco Bay in Northern California, United States. Its neighbors to the south are the cities of Oakland and Emeryville. To the north is the city of Albany and the unincorporated community of Kensington...
. 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
Blog
A blog is a type of website or part of a website supposed to be updated with new content from time to time. Blogs are usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video. Entries are commonly displayed in...
.
The library’s collection holdings date back to 1948 and before. The collection 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 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
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
(including French language publications from Quebec
Quebec
Quebec or is a province in east-central Canada. It is the only Canadian province with a predominantly French-speaking population and the only one whose sole official language is French at the provincial level....
), Australia
Australia
Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...
, and several western European countries (mainly the United Kingdom
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
, France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
, Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
, Netherlands
Netherlands
The Netherlands is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, located mainly in North-West Europe and with several islands in the Caribbean. Mainland Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east, and shares maritime borders...
, Sweden
Sweden
Sweden , officially the Kingdom of Sweden , is a Nordic country on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. Sweden borders with Norway and Finland and is connected to Denmark by a bridge-tunnel across the Öresund....
, Finland
Finland
Finland , officially the Republic of Finland, is a Nordic country situated in the Fennoscandian region of Northern Europe. It is bordered by Sweden in the west, Norway in the north and Russia in the east, while Estonia lies to its south across the Gulf of Finland.Around 5.4 million people reside...
). The collections are particularly strong in urban transportation; highway and traffic engineering; aviation (airports, airlines, aeronautics in general); rail transportation; intelligent transportation system
Intelligent transportation system
The term intelligent transportation systems refers to information and communication technology that improve transport outcomes such as transport safety, transport productivity, travel reliability, informed travel choices, social equity, environmental performance and network operation...
s.
Services
The library primarily serves the faculty, students, researchers and staff of the Institute of Transportation Studies in UC Berkeley, UC Davis, UC Irvine, and UCLA. 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’s Melvyl online catalog, OCLC’s WorldCat database, and the 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 the Water Resources Center 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 an exhibit featuring weird and wonderful transportation ideas from the past. The exhibit was assembled from items in the Transportation Library's collections.