UC Merced Magazine | Commemorative Chronicle

October 7, 2003 — Groundbreaking Ceremony for the Kolligian Library — (from le to right) Founding Librarian R Bruce Miller, Former Chair of the UC Regents Leo S. Kolligian and Founding Chancellor Carol Tomlinson-Keasey

Beginnings

Miller was drawn to UC Merced from UC San Diego by an opportunity to create an innovative research library for a population of students who had been underserved. is was not a formulaic or simple task. No academic library had been founded in the 21st century. e most recent UC campus in Santa Cruz opened 50 years earlier in 1965; the latest U.S. research university, Clark Atlanta University, had opened in 1988. In the ensuing decades, the information landscape had changed drastically with the promise of increasing access to full-text information resources online. A er all, it was not until the late 1990s, with the arrival of user-friendly web browsers, that the internet became mainstream. It was in that context that Miller and the team of founding library sta embarked on shaping the library.

Establishing a University of California campus in Merced called for the creation of a 21st century academic library. In 2001, two events were key to establishing the UC Merced Library. Chancellor Carol Tomlinson-Keasey hired founding University Librarian R Bruce Miller and UC Merced named its rst academic building the Leo and Dottie Kolligian Library. Leo Kolligian had advocated for a UC campus in the San Joaquin Valley while Chair of the UC Board of Regents in the late 1980s. He and his wife Dottie served as inaugural members of the UC Merced Foundation Board of Trustees. In addition to these contributions, they underscored their deep commitment to higher education access with an endowment for the library. Additional support for the endowment came from Ed and Jeanne Kashian and the library's rst- oor entrance is named in their honor.

UCMERCED MAGAZINE 78