About the collection
Initial funding for the formation of the Center was provided by the Estate of the late Dr. Sara B. Aleshire, alumna of AHMA and a distinguished scholar of Greek epigraphy and ancient Greek religion. Part of her bequest consisted of a substantial research library in Greek epigraphy, an extensive collection of offprints, especially in Greek religion, an archive of photographs of Greek inscriptions, and a large collection of squeezes. This core collection has been augmented by additional books, squeezes, offprints, and photos from the collections of the late Prof. Ron Stroud, the late Prof. Leslie Threatte, the late Prof. W. Kendrick Pritchett and the late Prof. Raphael Sealey of U.C. Berkeley, and the ongoing work of Berkeley faculty in the field of Greek epigraphy. Our collection was further enriched by two notable gifts: the squeeze collection of Michael H. Jameson (Professor Emeritus of Stanford University at the time of his death); and a gift from Prof. Diane Harris Cline (George Washington University) of several hundred paper squeezes and photographs of Attic inventory lists from the Classical period.
The Center aims, through regular and active acquisition, to maintain an epigraphic library that is both deep and current and that will serve the needs of Berkeley's faculty and students as well as those of visiting scholars. At present, the Aleshire Center’s library consists of ca. 1,600 books, 5,000 offprints, more than 1,000 photos, and some 900 squeezes, which are housed on the Berkeley Campus in 310 Dwinelle Hall, and available for use by faculty, students, and visitors.
The Center's holdings may be searched through our online database. In addition to seeing the content of our collection of books (catalogued according to Library of Congress standards), journals, and offprints, users may view digital images of the squeezes and offprints. Should a user wish to view a high-resolution (1200 dpi) version of any of these images, s/he should contact the director of the center.
Searching instructions
The database features Google-like search capability. In the "Search Holdings" tab, a search for "Epidauros," for example, will yield book, offprint, squeeze, and photo results. Users may also search by specific content type, which will yield a narrower set of results. Searches for inscriptions from the IG corpus should take the form (for example) "IG I(3).1.10" rather than "IG I3 1.10". A citation like this may be entered in the general search box or entered piecemeal in the "Corpus/Vol/Ed" and "Corpus Doc. #" fields. The Volume field should include the volume number, edition (in parentheses), and fascicle number, if any, preceded by a period. In the example given above, you would enter "IG I(3).1" in the "Volume" field, and "10" in the Corpus Doc. #" field. Entering "IG I(3)" in the "Corpus/Vol/Ed" field will yield all squeeze and photo holdings of texts from that volume. Other corpora (e.g. SEG, Hesperia) may be searched using the same principles (as relevant). In general, the more data you enter into the search field(s), the more refined your results will be. Users can also browse content by city, region, inscription type, century, and any combination of the above.