Donald Ryder Dickey was born in Dubuque, Iowa and graduated from Yale University. His study and photography of birds and mammals began as a hobby, but soon turned into his life-long vocation. Mr. Dickey built a library of 10,000 volumes, a collection of 50,000 specimens of birds and mammals, and a photographic portfolio of more than 7,700 pictures. Much of this remarkable collection was gathered during field work in Canada, Laysan Island, Hawaii, California and Baja California.

After her husband's death in 1932, Florence Van Vechten Dickey, donated all of his collections to UCLA. The books, journals and photographic collection reside in the Louise M. Darling Biomedical Library where they form an important research resource for working biologists and historians of natural habitats. Many of the older books are quite rare and are now part of the Biomedical Library's History & Special Collections Division, along with Mr. Dickey's photographs and negatives.

In 1994, Mr. Dickey's son, Donald R. Dickey Jr., made a generous gift to UCLA to improve the preservation of his father's collection and to enable development of a database and finding aid for the photographic collection.