6 An article printed in the Oakland Enquirer in 1888 describes an emerging distinctness in the printed resources with “sets of some of the great German publications from European universities and of foreign governments, of which there are some cases only one other copy, and in other cases none on the Coast.” 7 By 1898, Berkeley - with gifts of Semitic texts from local patrons such as Alfred Greenbaum, Louis Sloss, and Mary Avery and at least one renowned institution, Columbia University - soon possessed one of the largest collections of Jewish literature in the United States. Located inside the newly constructed Bacon Library and Art Museum, it quickly became indispensable to students. 5 In 1884, a professor of linguistics named Alvin Putzker, renowned for having mastered 27 languages, generously put forth his own funds to form a German collection.

In 1880, the Library hired its first overseas agent Charles Ferdinand Reinwald to procure publications from France. Several other collections based around languages were subsequently formed. The interest was to be used for the acquisition of materials in the arts, sciences and literature, establishing the Library’s very first endowment. 3 Michael Reese, a visionary financier and German immigrant who amassed his fortune during the Gold Rush of 1849, bequeathed $50,000 to the Library in 1879. Formally given to the university after his death, it constituted the foundation for Berkeley’s prestigious Chinese collection. 2 He placed his personal collection of Chinese texts on deposit in the Library where it remained available after his retirement. The Agazzi Professorship in Oriental Languages and Literature, as it was named, was first held by John Fryer, an English sinologist who had lived in China for over 35 years. 1 The university’s founders saw the state’s future in the Pacific, towards the East, and in 1872 one of them, a San Francisco lawyer named Edward Tompkins, established the first endowed chair. Among these 1,036 books were many written in Ancient Greek and Latin, ancient languages required for the Bachelor of Arts degree. Its first library came from its predecessor the state-chartered College of California in Oakland. Since the University of California at Berkeley’s founding in 1868, students and faculty have placed emphasis on other languages besides English. Source: UARC Num.: 4:43, The Bancroft Library, UC Berkeley. View of foreign students gathered at north end of South Hall, with portion of Wheeler Hall in background. 77 A Short History of Languages in the UC Berkeley Library Charter Day, 1920.

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