Occidental College Library Special Collections & College Archives

Collection Description: Occidental College is a part of LA history since 1887! 

Occidental has a commitment to document the history of our local communities. Through our partnerships with community organizations in Eagle Rock, Highland Park, and Boyle Heights, we are discovering ways to get residents and Oxy students to explore history, what it means to be a community, and why being part of one is important in building identity. 

Projects include the preservation and digitization of old community newspapers from Eagle Rock and Highland Park, using HistoryPin to share photos and stories about the neighborhoods, and using the Internet Archive's Archive-it service to capture and archive websites of official government organizations, historical societies, neighborhood councils, and individual blogs.

Los Angeles and the Southern California region include the following: • Japanese American Relocation Collection: letters, pamphlets, newspapers, and other publications related to the forced internment of people of Japanese heritage during World War II with particularly emphasis on college student relocation and higher education • Robinson Jeffers Collection: books, manuscripts, photographs, letters, editions, and other works by and about this Californian poet (1887-1962); Ward Ritchie Press Collection: examples of the work of this Los Angeles printer and book designer (1905-1996), along with Ritchie’s Christmas book collection • K. Garth Huston Plantin Press Collection: nearly all the books printed by Saul and Lillian Marks at their Plantin Press in Los Angeles between 1930 and the mid-1980s •  • Pauley-Voorhis Western Americana Collection: first-person narratives by the men and women who explored and settled the American West • Max and Virginia Hayward Californiana Collection: first-person narratives and histories dealing with the early settlement of California • Northrop/Millar Aviation Collection: material documenting the history and development of the aviation industry in Southern California • Bill Henry Collection: personal library and papers of the Los Angeles Times columnist (1890–1970), whose interests included the Olympic Games, modern history, presidential campaigns, and aviation in Southern California  Upton Sinclair Collection: Collected works of writer and social activist Upton Sinclair (1878-1968), magazines, pamphlets, news clippings and materials related to End Poverty in California, EPIC, the 1934 campaign for California governorship • The College Archives: administrative records and college publications documenting college life and higher education since 1887, includes thirty-five thousand historical photographs of the college, college activities and northeastern Los Angeles •  Charles Fletcher Lummis including Mr. Lummis' handwritten "Daily Journal" are also among the department's holdings.