It is a thrill to write to tell you that the surviving members of the iconic rock 'n' roll band, the Grateful Dead, have selected the UCSC Library as the permanent home for their substantial archive of materials documenting the band's history. The collection will be the largest donation ever made to the library's Special Collections Department, and it includes more than 2,000 square feet of memorabilia, artifacts, and other documents. This incomparable archive will undoubtedly become a major resource for research related to the Grateful Dead, the phenomenon of the Deadheads, American music, and popular culture during the last three decades of the 20th century.
The formal announcement of this gift will be made this morning at a press conference to be held at the Fillmore in San Francisco, a singularly appropriate venue where the band performed many times. Chancellor Blumenthal will be present to accept the archive on behalf of the campus, and he will be joined by Grateful Dead band members Bob Weir and Mickey Hart.
UCSC has a long tradition of academic interest in the Grateful Dead. Fred Lieberman, professor of music, teaches a course on the band, and he has also collaborated with Mickey Hart on two books, Planet Drum and Drumming at the Edge of Magic. It was through Professor Lieberman that we first became aware of the search for a home for the archive.
The Library will be raising funds to support the processing and preservation of the archive, and, as work on it begins, we will provide regular updates on our web site.
The press conference, which will begin at 11 a.m., will be streamed live on the web. You can access it via a link on the UCSC home page; a press release, providing more information about this substantial gift, will also be posted there at that time.
