The Bancroft Library is the primary special collections library of the University of California, Berkeley. It was acquired as a gift/purchase (November 25, 1905) from its founder, Hubert Howe Bancroft, with the proviso that it retain the name Bancroft Library in perpetuity. The collection consisted of 50,000 volumes of historical materials on the history of California and the North American West, from the Isthmus of Panama to Alaska and from the Trans-Mississippi West to Hawaii, including the great Pacific voyages of discovery of Cook, Malaspina, Vancouver, La Pérouse, and Otto von Kotzebue. At the time it was the largest such collection in the world, and remains so today.
Read more about Bancroft Library: Later History, Holdings and Services, Further Reading
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“Madam, a circulating library in a town is as an evergreen tree of diabolical knowledge; it blossoms through the year. And depend on it ... that they who are so fond of handling the leaves, will long for the fruit at last.”
—Richard Brinsley Sheridan (1751–1816)