Italian

The mission of USC Shoah Foundation - The Institute for Visual History and Education is to develop empathy, understanding and respect through the use of testimony. Shoah Foundation’s Visual History Archive contains 55,000 videotaped interviews with witnesses to the Holocaust and other genocides that were conducted in 65 countries and in 43 languages over the period 1994-2018. The approximately 2,600 interviews that were gathered in Los Angeles relate to the experiences of Jewish Holocaust survivors who came to the city during and after World War II.

The Edith R. Wyle Research Library of the Craft and Folk Art Museum (CAFAM) was donated to the L.A. County Museum of Art Research Library in December 1997 during a period of consolidation for the Museum. (CAFAM reopened in April 1999 under the auspices of the City of Los Angeles Cultural Affairs Department.) The Edith R. Wyle Library's holdings reflect the exhibiting and collecting interests of the Craft and Folk Art Museum. It's holdings pertaining to traditional folk art, international contemporary craft and design, professional museum practice, cultural diversity, and cultural context are significant. It's particular strengths are in the areas of Mexican and Japanese folk art, masks and masking worldwide, and the history of folk art and craft collecting. Altogether the Wyle Research Library's holdings comprise approximately 5,500 books as well as exhibition catalogs, journals, newspaper clipping and pamphlet files, posters, biographical files on contemporary craft artists (including slides), and biographical files on self-taught artists. In 1994 the Bead Society of Los Angeles donated the library collection of about 200 books, catalogs, and ephemera on beads.

USC began its film program in 1929 and we house all the produced student films as well as Educational and Hollywood films dating back to the 1910's. Individual collections include unique production documents and ephemera, including photographs, set design art, legal documents. Many parts of Los Angeles have been represented such as Kent MacKenzies Bunker Hill 1956.

Collection Description: Virginia Robinson Gardens, built in 1911, was the first estate in Beverly Hills. Today, it is listed on the national registry of historic sites. Social doyenne, art collector and philanthropist Mrs. Virginia Robinson resided in the house for thirty years and, before her death in 1977, she gave it to Los Angeles County for the public to enjoy. This historic estate, which includes her home, complete with her extensive collection of American and European fine and decorative arts and surrounding garden, continues to attract visitors from around the world. There are tours for adults and a special children's tour for third graders. In addition, the Gardens hosts lectures and educational series that include talks by scholars, gardening classes, and visits to other significant cultural and botanical sites in the Los Angeles area. The collection consists of art objects personally acquired by Mrs. Robinson and her husband Mr. Harry Robinson. The estate houses a significant library, objects from France, India and Italy (among other countries) and a collection of china and glassware. The 6 acres of garden surrounding the house is bursting with diverse plants and flowers from around the world and remains one of the main attractions of this unique historic site. The Robinson Gardens enriches not only the city of Beverly Hills but the entire county of Los Angeles. Its popularity continues to grow as the staff works towards making the site better known and more accessible to the public.

Located on the Getty Center campus in Brentwood, the Research Library at the Getty Research Institute focuses on the history of art, architecture, and archaeology from prehistory to the contemporary period. Presently, the collections are strongest in the history of western European art and culture in Europe and North America; however, in recent years, they have expanded to include other areas, such as Latin America, Eastern Europe, and selected regions of Asia. The library's foundation lies in its special collections of original documents and objects. Recent acquisitions and initiatives have documented developments during the postwar years in Southern California. The special collections include contemporary artists' photographers' by Los Angeles artists; archives and manuscripts of Southern California artists, writers, and curators such as Sam Francis, Robert Irwin, and Henry Hopkins; archives of art publications such as High Performance magazine; prints, drawings, and multiples, including a complete set of those produced by Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions; rare photographs and photographers’ archives, such as Charles Brittin's; architectural drawings and comprehensive archives such as John Parkinson's drawings for Union Station, the Walt Disney Concert Hall documentation, the Pierre Koenig and John Lautner archives, and the Julius Shulman Photography Archive highlighting Los Angeles architecture. Documenting the advanced art that put Los Angeles and Southern California on the map of the international art world, Long Beach Museum of Art Video Archive, now part of the Research Library's collections, contains close to 5000 tapes and supporting files.

Collections include 5,000+ oral histories in 250 projects, representing geographical, ethnic, political, religious, and social communities of selected Orange County, Los Angeles, Southern California, and Western US locales. Topics include community histories, environmental studies, including Sierra Club, Laguna Beach Greenbelt, Bolsa Chica, ethnic studies (African American, Native American, Mexican American, Japanese American, Judaica Studies, Vietnamese Americans), politics and government (Orange County politics, conservative women), society and culture (sulf culture, surf music, women with silicone breast implants, sports and society in Cold War Southern California, theater, baseball, women in long-term marriages, transformation of grocery stores, and new wave in Czechoslovakian film, 1990s UCI fertility clinic scandal, Mormon colonies in Mexico), just to name a few.

Though the UCLA Ethnomusicology Archive has traditionally focused on collecting musics outside of Los Angeles, in recent years the Archive has developed a significant collection of LA-based materials. These materials include the following: AFAMILA - Archiving Filipino American Music in Los Angeles: includes commercial and non-commercial recordings of LA based FilAm artists. Donn Borcherdt Collection: includes recordings of LA based Mexican music. GALA - Gospel Archiving in Los Angeles: includes commercial and non-commercial recordings of LA based Gospel music; UCLA Ethnomusicology Audiovisual Collection: includes audiovisual recordings documenting guest artists, lectures, and performance ensembles associated with ethnomusicology at UCLA; Emily Sene Collection: includes field recordings of LA based Sephardic music; D. K. Wilgus Folksong Collection: includes LA based field recordings documenting original field recordings of cowboy songs, jokes, oral histories, Japanese tales, Israeli folklore, blues, and folk music.

Since 1912, Western Costume Company has supplied costumes for film, television, stage, and school productions. In 1915, this costume house established the first production research library. Today the library’s holdings document what people around the world have worn throughout the ages. The library’s archival holdings consist of costume sketches, historic costumes, and the Twentieth Century Fox costume still collection from the late 1930s -1970s.

Subject strengths: local history, wine, cookbooks, poetry, botany, mycology, philosophy, art and architecture. Collections: University Archives, Cal Poly Rose Float Collection, Wine Industry Collection, The Thomas Pinney Collection of wine books and wine related research files, the United Farm Workers Collection, Virginia Hamilton Adair Collection, First Edition Collection, John Gill Modern Poetry Collection, Abraham Kaplan Collection, League of Women Voters (East San Gabriel Valley) Collection, Academic Senate Archive, Low magazine archive (student underground newspaper), Cal Poly Women's Club, Student Wives Club, Voorhis School for Boys, Voorhis Family, Robert Lawrence Balzer Collection, World Menu Collection, Kennedy Collection, Humphrey Mycology Collection. Campus History: Cal Poly Pomona was originally founded in San Dimas in 1938, as an all male agricultural/horticultural southern branch campus of California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo. In 1949 the college acquired the W.K. Kellogg Arabian Horse Ranch in Pomona where it moved the campus in 1956. In 1961 it went coed and in 1966 separated from San Luis Obispo. In 1972, California State Polytechnic University, Pomona was awarded full university status. The University Archives, which document this history includes: photographs, books, records, memorabilia, architectural drawings, sound and video recordings, newspaper clippings and scrapbooks. The University Archives also include materials from the Voorhis School for Boys--the San Dimas institution for orphaned and underprivileged boys that originally inhabited the site of what later became the San Dimas/Voorhis campus of Cal Poly San Luis Obispo. Charles Voorhis built the school and his son H. Jerry Voorhis was headmaster. The school operated from 1928 to 1938, when Jerry Voorhis was elected to Congress. In 1938 Charles Voorhis donated the school facility to Cal Poly San Luis Obispo to be its Southern California branch. This permitted students to gain experience with cultivation of important "sub-tropical" crops such as oranges. Materials include photographs, film, video, DVDs, books, files, memorabilia, and architectural drawings. The Wine Industry Collection documents all aspects of the wine industry in Southern California, beginning with the Missions. This collection includes books, journals, newspapers, photographs, oral histories, posters, files, winery memorabilia, video recordings, news clippings, wine labels, wine bottles, medals, and wine club newsletters.

The Library and Archives of the Autry Musuem collects books, sound recordings, and printed materials related to the history, geography, fine arts, and material, popular and consumer culture of the American West. Archival materials and artifacts related to Los Angeles cover Spanish California, and Southern California history, tourism, and industry predominately from the late 1800s to mid-1900s. Archival collections document the West of the imagination and the Hollywood cowboy that include posters, scripts, press kits, fan letters, costume designs, scrapbooks, and publicity stills that document the growth of the film and television industry as well as key personalities in the field. The Library and Archives also have Southern California collections related to books and serials on tribal histories, government, and social life and customs of the native peoples, a large photo archive, more than 700 wax cylinder recordings of Mexican American and Native American songs recorded by Charles F. Lummis between 1895 and 1912 in the Southern California area, manuscript materials strong in local history and the history of American anthropology. The collection includes approximately 50,000 books and serials, 2,000 sound recordings, 3,000 maps, 147,000 photographs, 3,000 works of art on paper, and 700 manuscript collections.

The mission of the Library and Archives is to provide exemplary stewardship for our renowned collections, inspire scholarship by a multidisciplinary research community, and fuel discussion about the past, present and future of the American West. We actively connect Autry visitors to book and archive collections in exhibition galleries and public programs, through engaging outreach and diverse collaborations.

The Autry’s new, state-of-the-art collections care, research, and educational facility in Burbank is anticipated to open in late 2019/early 2020. Until then, the Autry collections are not available for outside access, including in-person research. Please visit our online collections database for information about many of the items within the collections. Sign-up for this e-mail list to receive updates about the opening of the Resources Center. We look forward to seeing you in our new home!