In 1969 Louise Darling, then head of the UCLA Biomedical Library, hired a young library school student to work part-time in the cataloging division. Some fifteen years later, after working in nearly all of the library's divisions and managing a number of them, Alison Bunting was named director of the Biomedical Library and then associate university librarian for sciences. Equally comfortable with cutting-edge library technology and with rare books and historical documents, Ms. Bunting guided the Biomedical Library's development into one of the top biomedical research libraries in the country, leading the way in creative, innovative, and user-focused collections and services. At the time of Ms. Bunting's retirement in 2002, Katharine Donahue, her longtime friend and head of the library's History and Special Collections, wrote a beautiful tribute in the UCLA Library Development News. Upon reading this article, Lee Walcott and the Ahmanson Foundation were moved to establish the Alison Bunting Endowed Rare Books Fund in the Louise M. Darling Biomedical Library in recognition of Ms. Bunting's exemplary work at UCLA. A wonderful homage to her years of dedicated service, the fund helps build the library's rare book holdings by making possible acquisitions in natural history, botanicals, and other areas of great interest to Ms. Bunting and the students, faculty, and scholars who use the Biomedical Library.
