Library

For the first time, UC Merced faculty members from each of the campus’s three schools have been chosen as principal investigators on some of the 21 exciting new projects that are being funded through UC’s Multicampus Research Programs and Initiatives (MRPI).

In addition, UC Merced researchers are collaborating on 10 of the other projects.

Deborah Taffa, an Indigenous author and educator whose book about growing up in a mixed-race home and struggling with social acceptance was hailed as one the best memoirs of 2024, will make a special visit to Merced this month.

On Dec. 3, the date of this year's Giving Tuesday, UC Merced will participate in the worldwide day of charitable giving by launching Give to UC Merced 2024. For the fifth year, the university's annual fundraising initiative will extend beyond its original 24-hour period to the entire month of December.

The UC Merced Library is hosting an opening reception for a new art exhibit that showcases the farmworker movement in the Central Valley through the lens of the late photographer and labor activist George Ballis.

The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) has awarded a $750,000 grant to the UC Merced Library in partnership with the Center for the Humanities to establish a research archive documenting the Sierra Nevada and Central Valley.

Higher education and high textbook prices usually go hand in hand, but hundreds of UC Merced students have been able to keep more money in their pockets thanks to a grant program.

Since opening its doors in August 2005, the UC Merced Library has served as the hub of the campus. That all changed when the coronavirus pandemic hit and the building was forced to close in March 2020. Now, the library is gearing up to reopen its doors on Aug. 16 and welcome back members of the university and community.

When the UC Merced Library acquired the Ernest Lowe collection of photographs last year, along with it came intimate portraits of labor leader, community organizer, businessman and Latino American civil rights activist Cesar Chavez.

Black History Month may feel different this February, after a year of the coronavirus and historic protests for social justice. While coming together couldn’t be more important, under current conditions few are able to gather to celebrate Black History Month and the many contributions Black people have made to society. 

In the 1960s, Ernest Lowe took his camera into the rural towns of California’s Central Valley, documenting the lives and struggles of farm-working communities. Sixty years later, these photos are available to the public through UC Merced, showing the raw reality of farm laborers and their families during these tumultuous times.