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October 19, 1998

Library staff take lead on campus giving

By Barbara McKenna

We all want to have jobs we care about, and seven staff members at McHenry Library clearly do. These seven put not only their heart into their work, but their personal resources as well.

UCSC staffer Rolf Augustine has donated an additional $100,000 to an endowment he established at McHenry Library.

The seven, Rolf Augustine, Rita Bottoms, the late Donald Clark, Margaret Gordon, David Kirk, Alan Ritch, and Marion Taylor, have donated gifts of $10,000 or more each to establish endowments that will support the purchase of books and other materials for the University Library within certain subject areas.

All seven have been longtime employees at the library. Librarian Rita Bottoms, who came to UCSC in 1965, established the David and Ida Berner Endowment for the Kenneth Patchen Archive in 1997. The late University Librarian Donald Clark and his wife, Emily, established the Donald T. and Emily Clark Map Endowment in 1992. Margaret Gordon, a librarian at UCSC since 1970, and husband Alan Ritch, a librarian at UCSC since 1978, established the Alec and Phyllis Ritch and Harold and Annie Gordon Interdisciplinary Endowment in 1997. David Kirk, a library media specialist who came to UCSC in 1972, established the David Kirk Video Endowment in 1998. Librarian emeritus Marion Taylor established the Marion E. Taylor Music Fund in 1996.

Rolf Augustine is the third most senior employee on campus. When Augustine came here in 1965, the University Library was located in the Carriage House. Augustine has made two extremely generous gifts to the library in recent years, and his recent donation is the largest individual gift in the library's history.

His first contribution, in 1996, established the Rolf Augustine Cataloging Endowment. This year, using funds from a family inheritance, Augustine made an additional gift of $100,000, ensuring that the Augustine Endowment will become a significant vehicle for preserving and expanding the library's cataloging operation.

"When people use the library, they think of the reference desk and circulation, not the behind-the-scenes work of acquisitions, collection development, and cataloging," Augustine said. "Over the years I've developed a certain amount of loyalty for the library. I decided to make this donation because I thought it would be a good way to provide support to those who come after me."

According to University Librarian Allan Dyson, "Cataloging is the foundation for the library's comprehensive program of services to the UCSC community. As the World Wide Web has all too amply demonstrated, the cataloging function is what transforms a hodge-podge of materials into a useful resource. Through the thousands of items he has personally cataloged for the library collection, and, through his generous gifts, Rolf's influence will be felt, and his name remembered, as far as we can see into the library's future."

Unless you are a library staffer you may not see Augustine, who works in a staff-only section of McHenry Library, but you may have ordered his lunch at the Whole Earth Restaurant. Augustine's consistent patronage of the restaurant was acknowledged years ago when a new menu item was added to the board. "Rolf's Special" offers the soup, bread and cheese, and fruit that Augustine has ordered every single working day since the restaurant opened.

After 33 years here, Augustine is, of course, eligible to retire. But it has always been his plan to take his leave on the last day of the millennium, which means library staff and users will benefit from Augustine's talents for two more years.


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