Archdiocese of Los Angeles Archival Center

The Archival Center that the Archdiocese of Los Angeles built at the San Fernando Mission and opened in 1980 is a measured response to the church's obligation to collect and preserve records associated with the human activities constituting California's Catholic heritage. The facility houses papers, documents, correspondence, and related materials generated since 1840 by the Archdiocese of Los Angeles and its antecedent jurisdictions. The Center's archives include numerous photographic collections and various image holdings that number in the hundreds of thousands. The center's library presently comprises about fifteen thousand books primarily on California history, American Catholic history, bibliography, archives, and archivism. Eleven digests of the center's archival documents have been published, and more than ten thousand of the library's books are classified and described in The Literary High Spots of Mission Hills, California (1998). Various objects from the center's holdings are on exhibit in the center's Historical Museum. It is the "hope and prayer" of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles "that the books, documents, manuscripts, and historical memorabilia housed at the Archival Center will become the means for as-yet-unborn generations to stand taller upon the shoulders of their predecessors."