Though most of the current denizens of the Perry-Castañeda Library (PCL) are too young to appreciate it, the campus’s flagship library turns 40 this year, which is significant in the life of a modern library given the change that the institution has experienced in the last couple of decades.
When PCL was conceived, it was believed that the new building would accommodate the growth in physical collections for the foreseeable future; little did our 20th century forebears imagine the impact digital technologies and a global information network would have on the preservation, storage and distribution of knowledge.
With the upcoming celebration of the Perry-Castañeda Library’s 40th anniversary on the horizon, let’s take a moment to look back at what else was happening back in 1977…
- Biochemist Lorene Rogers is president of The University of Texas at Austin, and Harold Billings is director of the university’s General Libraries, and enrollment at UT is 41,660.
- Dolph Briscoe is the governor of Texas, Austin has a population of 321,900 (now 947,890), and Texas has 13.19 million (now 27.86 million).
- Median income: $13,572. Average cost of: a house — $54,200; a car — ~$4,300; a gallon of gas — $0.62; annual tuition, room & board — $2,411.
- Apple Computer is incorporated, and later in the year, the first Apple II series computers go on sale.
- The Thorn Birds by Colleen McCullough is the best-selling fiction of the year.
- Laverne & Shirley is the top rated TV show.
- The critically-acclaimed television miniseries adaption of Alex Haley’s Roots airs.
- The punk band The Clash’s debut album The Clash is released on CBS Records.
- Optical fiber is first used to carry live telephone traffic.
- The first Chuck E. Cheese’s Pizza Time Theatre opens in San Jose, California.
- George Lucas’s Star Wars opens in cinemas and becomes the highest-grossing film of its time. Woody Allen’s Annie Hall wins the Oscar for Best Picture. Also released: Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Eraserhead, and Smokey and the Bandit.
- Rod Stewart’s “Tonight’s the Night,” is Billboard’s Top Hot 100 single for the year, and Fleetwood Mac’s Rumors is the top-selling album.
- Elvis Presley, the “king of rock and roll”, dies in his home in Graceland at age 42.
- Jimmy Carter signs legislation creating the United States Department of Energy.
- NASA launches the Voyager 1 spacecraft.
- British punk band Sex Pistols release Never Mind the Bollocks, Here’s the Sex Pistols on the Virgin Records label.
- San Francisco elects City Supervisor Harvey Milk, the first openly gay elected official of any large city in the U.S.
- Saturday Night Fever is released, launching the careers of John Travolta and resulting in multiple hits for the Bee Gees.
- Atari, Inc. releases the Atari 2600 game console in North America.
- The first children’s cable channel The Pinwheel Network (later known as Nickelodeon), is launched.
- The first ever event is hosted at the newly opened Frank Erwin Center on November 29 when the Longhorn men’s basketball team defeats Oklahoma, 83-76.
- The Longhorn football team finishes the regular season with an 11–0 record, and running back Earl Campbell wins the Heisman Trophy, leading the nation in rushing with 1,744 yards.
What were you doing in 1977?
I was packing my belongings and preparing to move to Austin to begin work at the PCL Reference Desk on January 1, 1978.
I was finishing the MLS program at LSU, sitting in the student lounge, passing around the C&RL News story about PCL, as we discussed whether the building was designed as an abstract shape of Texas or not. I’ve accepted that it isn’t, but it certainly is the first thing you think of when you see it.
After two years in the graduate program in the History Dept., I had moved over to the Law School, and I was in my last year there. I studied for law finals in the peaceful setting of PCL, after it opened, because it was far away from the buzz of law students at Townes Hall.