Donald Barclay

August 27, 2019 was a remarkable day at UC Merced. Our Interim Chancellor Nathan Brostrom led 2400 new students across the Scholars Lane Bridge and through the Beginnings sculpture. In the Library, over 100 students and faculty joined us as we celebrated the official re-opening of our refurnished fourth floor. And Congressman Jim Costa paid a visit to the Library’s Digital Curation and Scholarship Center to see for himself the work we are doing on CARA, the California Agricultural Resources Archive.

As the representative to the U.S. Congress for a heavily agricultural district, Congressman Costa expressed his keen interest in, and strong support for, CARA. Among the items he viewed were the first annual report of the county agent of Merced (1917) and the narrative report of 1918 documenting the formation of the irrigation district, fire protection districts, as well as a campaign to eliminate jackrabbits in the county.

Congressman Costa was accompanied by District Representative Gabe Hulbert (UC Merced, Class of 2018).

On the day following his visit, Congressman Costa’s Facebook page included the following statement:

I had a fascinating visit at the UC Merced library where they are currently digitizing thousands of Valley agriculture documents dating back to 1913. With funding from a grant from the National Archives, they plan to save nearly 180,000 pages of reports and 2,000 photos!

We were delighted to host Congressman Costa and extend an invitation to have other Central Valley leaders in politics and agriculture pay us a visit.