Talk:University of California, Santa Barbara Library

A fact from University of California, Santa Barbara Library appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know column on 1 August 2011 (check views). The text of the entry was as follows:

Did you know... that a first edition of Darwin's On the Origin of Species is in the collection of the University of California, Santa Barbara Library?

A record of the entry may be seen at Wikipedia:Recent additions/2011/August. The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template talk:Did you know/University of California, Santa Barbara Library.

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Title

"University of California, Santa Barbara Library" is an awkward title (makes it sound as if it's the branch of University of California that is located at 'Santa Barbara Library'). Something like "Library of the University of California, Santa Barbara" is less ambiguous, although that is just something I made up. Their website calls itself "UC Santa Barbara Library", which is probably the closest thing there is to an "official name" and is less ambiguous than the current one; I think using that abbreviated form would be preferable to the fully spelled-out name (which is not actually used anywhere, as far as I can tell). rʨanaɢ (talk) 00:46, 27 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The University's own usage is inconsistent. For example: "This is an official University of California Santa Barbara Libraries' web page" (here); "UC Santa Barbara Library" (at welcome page); "University of California Santa Barbara Library" (bottom of page here); "University of California - Santa Barbara" (on the American Library Association's list of largest libraries in the United States). Neutrality^talk 02:14, 27 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

It looks like none of those usages include the comma, which is the main thing that was bothering me. rʨanaɢ (talk) 02:58, 27 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

True, but the name of the university does include the comma (University of California, Santa Barbara). In a case like this (with no official name), I would tend to look at usage and formality. Here's some numbers run through Google:

"University of California, Santa Barbara Library": 399,000 hits
"University of California, Santa Barbara Libraries": 5,400 hits
"Library of the University of California, Santa Barbara": 217,000 hits
"Libraries of the University of California, Santa Barbara": 3 hits (but, notable, does include two references in academic journal articles)
"UC Santa Barbara Library": 66,800 hits
"UC Santa Barbara Libraries": 1,580 hits

Neutrality^talk 14:00, 27 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]