The Bancroft Library at the University of California, Berkeley preserves some of the most intriguing rare and hard-to-find books in the country. According to their Web site, their holdings include 60,000 manuscript items, 8,000,000 photographs/pictorial materials, 43,000 microforms, and 23,000 maps. On the Archive, their digitized materials include classics like Joyce’s Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man, issues of Pacific Science Monthly, and a copy of Grammar of the Mikmaque Language of Nova Scotia.

The scope of the collection is large, with arguably some of the best sub-collections sitting in the Regional Oral History Office collection. ROHO is a department preserving Californian and West Coat history based primarily on interviews conducted, recorded, and transcribed. One such topic that ROHO has researched and preserved is wine, vinters, and Napa Valley.

Below is some required reading for all who wish to out-snob their friends at the next wine night:

Cheers!

–Cara Binder