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Libraries & Culture 37.3 (2002) 269-271



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Through a private donation from Stephen M. Silberstein, the library at the University of California, Berkeley founded the Mario Savio/Free Speech Movement (FSM) Endowment, created the Free Speech Movement Cafe in the Moffitt Library, and established the Free Speech Movement (FSM) Archive at the Bancroft Library. "There is a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can't take part, you can't even tacitly take part," said Mario Savio (1943-96), founder of the Free Speech Movement on the Berkeley campus in 1964, on 2 December 1964. Now, thanks to a 3.5-million-dollar gift from Silberstein, the University of California, Berkeley, Library and the Bancroft Library have begun an ambitious [End Page 269] program to document the role of Mario Savio and other participants in the Free Speech Movement.

As Silberstein noted during the ceremonies at which his gift was announced in April 1998, "We owe no small debt to Mario Savio and the individuals who made up the Free Speech Movement. Despite great personal and family sacrifice, they spoke up for the ideals upon which our society is based and in which we all believe: a more just world, civil rights, and the removal of limitations on the free discussion and advocacy of ideas." Silberstein, who worked in the University Library for ten years before leaving to cofound Innovative Interfaces, feels strongly that his support of "one of the world's truly great libraries, is something . . . Mario would appreciate." Silberstein's gift will fund three distinct entities at the University of California, Berkeley.

First, the Mario Savio/Free Speech Movement Endowment will supplement state appropriations for the library's collection budget. The Free Speech Movement Cafe, located in the Moffitt Undergraduate Library, will provide a public space for open discourse and displays about social and political issues. The Free Speech Movement Archive at the Bancroft Library includes original and digital documents related to the FSM. The endowed fund assists the library in the acquisition of humanities and social science materials. In addition, proceeds from the operation of the Free Speech Cafe support library collections and public programs relating to free speech and social action. Concurrently, the FSM Archive seeks to collect, preserve, and promote the documentary and visual legacy of the Free Speech Movement. The archive features the University Archives' Free Speech Movement records and is focused on student movements in California. However, archival materials include documentation on such related topics as 1960s civil rights protests and the Vietnam War. The FSM Archive also has generated a group of oral histories, compiled by the Regional Oral History Office (ROHO), a component of the Bancroft Library. Interviews focus on participants, leaders, witnesses, and subject areas such as the participation of women and minority students, faculty-student relationships, legal counsel, and the press. Over the years, ROHO interviewers have conducted interviews with UC administrators and professors, including Katherine A. Towle, then Dean of Students, whose letter to student organizations forbidding the distribution of political literature on university property ignited the movement. Towle's oral history, "Katherine A. Towle: Administration and Leadership," by interviewer Harriet Nathan is the first oral history in the project to appear online. The FSM Archive officially opened on 13 April 2001 with the presentation of a major exhibition in the UC libraries and a symposium, "Taking Part: FSM and the Legacy of Social Protest," with panel presentations by scholars and social activists from across the nation. [End Page 270]

The simple and elegant bookplate was designed by David Lance Goines, a noted graphic artist. Goines attended Berkeley but in his second year was expelled as a consequence of his participation in the Free Speech Movement. Though later readmitted, he had by then lost his taste for higher education and in 1965 apprenticed with a Berkeley printer. In 1968 he founded Saint Hieronymus Press in the same shop where he had learned his trade. There he has remained, designing his work and printing it by both letterpress and photo-offset lithography...

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