Shields Library, University of California, Davis is home to one of the finest collections of grape growing and wine making literature in the world. The collection is housed in the Maynard A. Amerine Viticulture & Enology Room on the third floor of Peter J. Shields Library, University of California, Davis. The collection gathers together materials on grape growing, grape diseases, wine making, fermentation science as well as the economic aspects of the wine industry. The primary emphasis is on the technical & scientific, historical and cultural aspects of grape growing and wine making with strong holdings in the economic and business aspects of grapes and wine. The collection is part of the Biological and Agricultural Sciences Department of Shields Library.

General Description

In physical terms, collection contains approximately 27,000 volumes representing both monographic and serial holdings. Shields Library currently maintains some 140 serial subscriptions and contains over 325 serial titles, both active and inactive in the viticulture and enology subject area. The form of material in the collection ranges from books and serials, to pamphlets, to maps, to printed ephemera, to archives and personal papers. Twenty nine different languages are represented within the collection. Roughly one third of the collection is housed in the Department of Special Collections with the remainder in the Maynard A. Amerine Viticulture & Enology Room. Maps are housed with the library map collection in the Government Information Department.

The significance of the Viticulture and Enology Collection is that the collection is one of the finest of its kind. Shields Library is a member of the Research Libraries Group (RLG) and as such, has evaluated the quality of its collections and the effort that is being expended to develop the various segments of the collection. The quality of the Viticulture and Enology Collection and the effort that is going into building the collection is at the highest ranking, a level 5. Shields Library is the only library in the United States that has such a collection rated at an RLG Level 5. Shields Library collects material in viticulture and enology in all languages and at all levels of expertise, as the budget allows. The commitment on the part of the library to maintain and build a collection of this magnitude is a measure of the importance of the Department of Viticulture and Enology.