We, the faculty, staff, students, and supporters of the Department of Anthropology strongly protest the February 23rd announcement from the university concerning the closure of the George and Mary Foster Anthropology Library. We, the undersigned, respectfully request that a plan be immediately put in place to return the George and Mary Foster Anthropology Library to the status of fully operational campus library by or before the start of the Fall 2023 semester.

The Anthropology Library at UC Berkeley is the cornerstone of the Anthropology Department at UC Berkeley that serves students, faculty, staff, and the broader public in the four subfields of anthropology (sociocultural anthropology, archaeology, biological anthropology, and linguistic anthropology) as well as medical anthropology, folklore and other scholarly disciplines. Built up over many decades, it contains the foremost collection of published and unpublished materials in California anthropology and archaeology (along with the university’s Bancroft Library), as well as a wealth of resources and printed volumes from across the globe pertaining to anthropology and related fields. UC Berkeley is home to one of only three dedicated anthropology libraries in the United States (the other two are Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania, both of which are private universities), among just a handful of others worldwide. This distinction is a significant boon for our campus, and instrumental in the ongoing recruitment of top-tier faculty and students. Beyond this, the library is already a significant space for undergraduate and graduate students and faculty, in Anthropology and beyond, to study, connect and collaborate–a priority for any public institution of higher education. It is a unique resource that merits protection. 

The Anthropology Library has been severely defunded in recent years by the administration.
Once a proud library with specialized librarians and staff that was opened to students as a welcoming space throughout the work day and beyond, it is now only opened M-F from 1 to 5 pm with no trained librarians on staff. In fact, books in the Anthropology Library must be checked out at another library on campus. The administration has put the Anthropology Library on life support and is now pulling the plug. Despite our communicating to the university about the crucial importance of the Anthropology Library for more than a year, our strong objections to closing the library have not been heard. The wonderful collections in this library that have been uniquely built up over many years will be lost: only the small, “high-use” portion of the current collection will be moved to the main stacks, far away from the Anthropology Department, and the rest will be stored off campus if our Anthropology Library is closed.

It is important to stress that what is happening to the Anthropology Library is not an isolated event on the UC Berkeley campus. Rather it is the canary in the coal mine. The university has severely cut the funding for the support of the broader University Library for more than a decade. A resolution from the Berkeley Faculty Association to restore support for the library to protect the quality of the university’s research and teaching mission was unanimously passed by the Academic Senate on Oct 19, 2022. This would involve an increase of many millions of dollars to match the level of funding in the past (taking inflation into account; see the Berkeley Faculty Association article in the Daily Cal). This kind of funding would not only augment the services and holdings of the entire University Library system, but it would also provide much needed support for satellite libraries, including the Anthropology Library.

The university administration states that budget constraints, staffing shortages, and space limitations are the main reasons to centralize the campus library systems. However, as noted in the Daily Cal article above, our university is willing to invest tens or hundreds of millions of dollars for other projects, including support for Cal Athletics, computing and data sciences, and other hard science programs. The campus has funding for these purposes, but not for the library, the core of our educational mission.
Together, we demand that the Anthropology Library be protected and fully supported by the University. We in turn, as library stakeholders, pledge to do all we can to collaborate with you in order to realize this demand for the continuation of our valuable Anthropology Library as a fully operational campus library.