Even a pandemic can’t slow us down. Here’s our impact, in numbers.
It was a year of unfathomable challenges. But our dedication never dimmed. Instead of shrinking in the face of adversity, across the Library, we adjusted to new ways of working and serving our community. Travails gave way to triumphs. And our mission — to help people find, evaluate, use, and create knowledge to better the world — was affirmed a thousand times over through the work we carried out every day.
1,322,850
Images scanned
The Library made immense progress in its digitization efforts, scanning more than 1.3 million images — 1,204,334 in-house and 118,516 with the help of vendors. Among the newly digitized materials are a collection of vibrant Cuban posters, interviews with Iraqi refugees, and stunning Japanese sugoroku game boards.
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831,609
Pageviews from Berkeley users to HathiTrust
Online repository HathiTrust netted more than 800,000 pageviews from Berkeley users this year. In early April, the Library activated HathiTrust’s emergency service, providing access to digital versions of millions of physical volumes for Berkeley students, staff, and faculty.
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13,475,065
Volumes in the Library’s collections
The number of volumes in the Library’s collections climbed steadily this year, moving further past the 13 million mark. In addition to books in a globe-spinning range of languages, the Library holds films, newspapers, musical scores, paintings, lithographs, audio and video recordings, photographs, and more. Other gems include papyrus fragments of Sophocles’ lost play Inachus and oracle bone pieces from as far back as 1400 B.C., bearing the oldest written scripts in Chinese.
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14,249
Participants in Library instruction
This year, thousands took part in the Library’s instruction sessions, covering topics such as information literacy, 3-D printing, and copyright. In addition to its in-person offerings, the Library held online sessions that drew 1,128 participants.
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128,907
Items in the Library’s Digital Collections
This year, the Library launched its Digital Collections website (digital.lib.berkeley.edu), an all-in-one portal into the Library’s digital gems. The site has 366 collections and nearly 130,000 records, which include photos from the early days of Cal and documentation of the 1906 earthquake.
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6,023,217
e-journal articles downloaded
Scholars downloaded over 6 million e-journal articles in the 2019 calendar year.
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4,485,656
Total pageviews
At a time when a strong online presence was more important than ever, the Library’s website netted nearly 4.5 million pageviews. Our COVID-19 portal, designed to connect users to our services and resources during the pandemic, racked up 18,187 pageviews.
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5,265
Visits to Moffitt in one day
Moffitt Library is a go-to destination on campus, with well over a million visits each year. On a single day in October 2019, during a sweeping power outage to mitigate wildfire risk that closed much of campus, Moffitt opened its doors, providing a space for members of the Berkeley community to escape the smoke, power up their devices, and study. On that day, Oct. 28, Moffitt had more than 5,200 visits, compared with the 4,693 average daily visits the previous year.
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422,818
e-books downloaded
In the 2019 calendar year, users downloaded more than 400,000 e-books through the Library.
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