History Highlight: BC Bookplates
Have you ever picked up one of the antiquated cloth-bound books in the BC library and opened up the cover to see the Romeo-and-Julietesque silhouettes of a woman and man reading on the stoop of the old brick building? It’s an interesting image, with its dramatic noir lighting, the Grecian pillar, the twirling branches of the tree behind the woman. It's clearly old just from looking at it, I mean, when was BC even called “BAKERSFIELD JUNIOR COLLEGE?”
This is a phenomenal example of a bookplate, also known as Ex Libris (translated from Latin to “From the library of”). In their modern form, they evolved alongside the advent of libraries in Germany during the Middle Ages, to denote ownership of the book to lenders, or sometimes donations to a collection. Bookplates were often decorative as well as practical; the stamps were hand carved with a burin onto copper or wood and often used brightly colored paint.
BC’s own bookplate collection is predominantly printed stickers, utilizing dramatic relief-style art alongside the names of the donors who contributed the books. Some of these names are handwritten, some not. These illustrations are a powerful window into the robust history of the legendary figures who worked here at BC. For example, you can view books donated from the personal collection of the legendary Grace Van Dyke Bird- first President of BC and the first woman president of a public community college in California; or from Assemblywoman Dorothy Donahoe, an important legislator in California higher education as she passed bills guaranteeing a spot for the top performing high schoolers in universities. Alternatively, you can see when BC made the switch from “Bakersfield Junior College” to just “Bakersfield College” in 1947. Open the cover, and you can see Bernice Braddon’s bookplate, featuring a Pegasus rearing through the clouds, wings outstretched wide in mid-flight. Or the ornate ‘GBD’ marking Bird’s personal collection, with its ornate filigree spelling her name.
We have found nine different bookplates in the Panorama Campus library, as shown here. Do you have a favorite?
