We are happy to report the archives recently received a generous gift through the International Transactional Analysis Association (ITAA) that will support the processing and cataloguing of Eric Berne collections preserved at the UCSF Library. It will also permit us to make a comprehensive and sizable part of his papers available online through the archives website so that researchers, practitioners, and general public can easily access and search it at any time.

Eric Berne, M.D., 1969. Eric Lennard Berne Papers, 1959-66, MSS 82-0.

Dr. Eric Berne (1910 –1970) was the founder of Transactional Analysis and since the beginning of 1980s the archives has been serving as a repository of his papers, including correspondence, photographs, films, and manuscripts. These collections were donated to UCSF by his former colleagues from the ITAA and also members of the Berne family.

Dr. Berne’s archival materials will continue to be a valuable resource for scholars researching his life and theory and to Transactional Analysis practitioners who wish to develop a deeper understanding of the man and his body of work.

This fundraising campaign was spearheaded by Carol Solomon Ph.D., Transactional Analyst based in San Francisco. The efforts quickly spread internationally to include Terry Berne (Eric’s youngest son) in Spain, Ann Heathcote in the United Kingdom, Gloria Noriega in Mexico, and Marco Mazzetti in Italy.

We are grateful to all dedicated donors from the ITAA, the European Association for Transactional Analysis, and other associations in the United States and around the world as well as many individuals and Eric Berne’s family for contributing funds for this project. Thanks to their generosity this gift allowed the archives to hire a project archivist, Kate Tasker who at the end of September started working on arranging several Eric Berne collections and preparing their finding aids. She will be regularly posting updates about the progress of the project and profiling treasures from these collections.

Kate is a recent graduate of San Jose State University’s Master of Library and Information Science (MLIS) program. She has worked in the archival field for the past three years, and became a member of the Academy of Certified Archivists in August 2012. Kate also holds a B.A. in History from Sonoma State University, where she focused on social history.

And today I would like to introduce Kate’s first story chronicling the Eric Berne processing and digitization project at UCSF.