Gender Specific

The Southern California Library for Social Studies and Research primarily documents and preserves the history of twentieth-century radicalism and social change through progressive movements in the greater Los Angeles area. The materials held by the library relate to the labor, peace, social justice, civil rights, women’s, gay and lesbian, and various other grassroots movements. While the library’s print holdings—numbering approximately thirty thousand books and three thousand periodical titles—range well beyond the subject of Los Angeles to socialism, Marxism, and the Cold War, its special collections focus on Los Angeles. These collections include twenty-five thousand pamphlets, fifteen hundred posters, two thousand photographs, one hundred documentary films, one hundred videos, thirty-five hundred audio tapes, organizational files for Los Angeles and national grassroots groups, and extensive subject files containing newspaper clippings, magazine articles, and reports. Among the library’s major archival collections are the papers of civil liberties defender Leo Gallagher, California Eagle editor and publisher Charlotta Bass, and Southern California Library for Social Studies and Research founders Emil and Tassia Freed, as well as papers from the Los Angeles chapter of the Civil Rights Congress, the Los Angeles Committee for the Protection of the Foreign Born, the Los Angeles International Ladies Garment Workers Union, and the Los Angeles Congress of Industrial Organizations. The archival collections on the Watts Rebellion of 1965, the Los Angeles chapter of the Black Panthers, and Chicano activism are heavily used, as are the documentary films of the 1930s from the Film and Photo League and those of the 1960s from the Newsreel (SDS) collective. The library is committed to making its collections on the multicultural history of Los Angeles widely available and to working with other institutions and organizations to ensure that a broadly based historical record of the city’s people is preserved for future generations.

The Digital Library of the University of Southern California (formerly known as the Digital Archive, formerly known as ISLA) is an ongoing project that is building a virtual library of digitized multidisciplinary materials much of which has a focus on the Los Angeles region. Its search and retrieval software will allows these materials to be accessed using the parameters of space, time, keyword, format, or collection. The Digital Library includes: Images selected from maps and historical newspapers in the Huntington Library’s collection, including color maps created by the Works Progress Administration (WPA) in 1939, the Spanish-language newspaper El Clamor Publico (1855-1859), and the Los Angeles Star (1852-1863); photographs and maps from the Automobile Club of Southern California (1892-1963); photographs of artifacts from the archaeological collection (1880-1933) of the Chinese Historical Society of Southern California; and from the University of Southern California’s collections, including the California Historical Society Collection (photographs of Los Angeles, 1860-1960), the Hearst Collection (news photographs from the Los Angeles Examiner, 1920-1961), the Whittington Collection (commercial and architectural photographs, 1924-1987), the East Asian Library (Korean-American documents, photographs, and oral histories), the Gamble House in Pasadena (architectural drawings, photographs and other documents relative to the Greene & Greene architects) (1888-1944); Texts such as manuscript documents pertaining to the activities of the Los Angeles Ayuntamiento and City Council (Los Angeles City Archives, Untitled Records Series, 1820s-1890s), newspaper clippings from the Los Angeles Examiner (1920-1961), and master’s theses and doctoral dissertations about Los Angeles written by students at the University of Southern California (1920s-1990s); Data from the historical federal censuses though 1990 and the WPA’s household survey of 1940. Because the Digital Library has arranged to digitize materials that are the intellectual property of various individuals and institutions, the downloading of some items may be subject to restrictions.

Based in the Little Tokyo area of Downtown Los Angeles, VC was founded in 1970 by a group of pioneering independent filmmakers to record, collect, and preserve a visual record of Asian Pacific American cultural heritage. VC originally worked as a film collective, concentrating on honestly portraying accurate images of Asian Americans and meticulously capturing pivotal social movements. VC produced groundbreaking works about the Asian American experience, including: CHINATOWN 2-STEP, a documentary on the suburbanization of Chinese American community in Los Angeles and the role of the Chinatown Drum and Bugle Corps; MANONG, a film on the first generation Filipino American immigrants; and WATARIDORI, a documentary on early Japanese American immigrant pioneers. VC published three books, In Movement: A Pictorial History of Asian Pacific America, Little Tokyo: One Hundred Years in Pictures, and Moving the Image: Independent Asian Pacific American Media Arts. Productions were used for education and activism that addressed setting up ethnic studies programs on local campuses, city redevelopment issues, the redress campaign for Japanese Americans interned during World War II, and the declaration of martial law in the Philippines. VC’s own past in all media, narrative films, documentaries and educational projects are intertwined with the Asian Pacific American movements of the 1970s, and in itself represents a rich resource for researchers of the Asian Pacific American movements. The Archives’ purpose is to document the history of the organization by organizing, preserving, and creating access to a variety of media art and primary materials recording impactful political moments and depicting the Asian Pacific American heritage for staff use, as well as by scholars who are interested in Visual Communications’ role in the Asian American communities and history. The holdings include over 300,000 photographic images, 1,500 titles in the Media Resource Library, 100 films and videos produced by Visual Communications, and over 1,000 hours of oral histories of pan-Asian Pacific American content. As a valuable resource of Asian media art representations, The Archives is open to a wide variety of users, and we encourage the public, artists, filmmakers, students, faculty and others to pursue an intercultural understanding of the Asian American heritage. VC’s vision for the archives is to accurately reflect and represent the diversity of the American populace and to cement Asian Pacific American experiences in the historical record through the preservation, access, and dissemination of our materials, which provide historical context and insight of Asian Pacific American influence not only for Asian Pacific Americans, but also for all Americans. Please refer to our list of holdings for more information: http://fromthevcvault.wordpress.com/vc-archives-collections/

The Academy Film Archive is part of the Academy Foundation, the educational and cultural arm of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Dedicated to the appreciation, study and preservation of our motion picture heritage, the Archive's activities include collection, preservation, documentation, exhibition and research access to films. The Academy announced its plan to collect motion pictures upon its founding in 1927 and made its first film acquisition two years later, in 1929. The Archive’s collection now includes over 140,000 items, covering some 70,000 individual titles. Many items within the Archive’s collection relate to the Los Angeles region, including: • Film and video documenting the history of the Academy and the Academy Foundation, including its public programs, lectures, symposia, and presentations. • Film, kinescope and videotape of Academy Awards ceremonies extending back to 1949, along with additional news material and special coverage of the awards show. • Films and film programs associated with the Student Academy Awards – a great number of which originate from Los Angeles film schools. Ongoing film festival collections, including the Latino International Film Festival and the PXL This! Pixelvision Film Festival Documentary film holdings include the collection of the International Documentary Association. Many of our documentary holdings feature subjects that are Los Angeles specific. Visual effects and technical achievements - through submissions for the Academy Awards process the Archive has acquired a substantial collection of visual effects reels, makeup and sound test reels, and film and video documentation of the Academy's Scientific and Technical Awards. Many materials from this collection were produced and crafted in the Los Angeles region. Home movies and amateur films, particularly those related to the history of Hollywood, the motion picture industry, and the history of the Los Angeles region.

Special Collections and Archives houses the UC Irvine Libraries' collections of rare books, manuscripts, archives, photographs, and other rare and special materials. Major collections include the Critical Theory Archive, the Southeast Asian Archive, and the University Archives, as well as in-depth collections on Orange County and California history, dance and performing arts, 20th-century political pamphlets, artists' books, rare books, and small press books. UCI’s collection documents the history of Orange County from the mission period through the present, in 3,000 books and pamphlets and more than 100 historical and contemporary archival and manuscript collections. Strengths include the Irvine Ranch, City of Irvine, Irvine Company, San Juan Capistrano Mission, city histories, ranchos, the 19th-century actress Helena Modjeska, environmental issues, politics, Disneyland, LGBT issues, and surfing. Materials include photographs, family papers, letters, oral history interviews, maps, postcards, newspapers, government documents, and an enormous collection of local ephemera (such as flyers and brochures).

Marlborough School is the oldest independent girls' school in southern California. Founded in 1889 in Pasadena by Mary S. Caswell, the School was located near U.S.C. (University Park, Chester Place) from 1890 to 1916 when it moved to its present location in Hancock Park. Created in 2001, the Archives fulfills its ambassadorial role by collecting, preserving and exhibiting historic items and materials related to the institution and its extended family of administrator, faculty, staff, students, parents and alumnae. Located in Marlborough's new Munger Hall, the Archive serves as the historical memory of the institution.

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.

The SCGS Library holds nearly 40,000 volumes, with a relatively small portion of the material related to LA. We have published indices to cemetery records, vital (birth, death and marriage) records, and immigration and naturalization. We provide free access to some data on our website. The Society is in the midst of a project to recreate the 1890 Census for Los Angeles County. The census records were lost in a fire in Washington DC, and our project is an attempt to recreate this valuable historical and genealogical resource. The 1890 data base will include vital records (births, deaths, marriage); cemetery records; city directories for the communities in the county; immigration and naturalization records; military records; voting records (Great Register); educational records; educational, social and fraternal societies; personal family records; and the flagship data, an every-name index of the Los Angeles Times from January 1, 1890 through December 31 of that year. New sources, as they are uncovered, will be added to this rich resource.

The collection includes early California newspapers. Mostly Spanish language. Demographic data sets that include birth records, marriage records, death records, censuses, tax records, and membership lists. Some secondary sources, such as monographs and journals. Some transcripts of family papers and public records.

This reference collection is about the history and culture of California. Contains over 20,000 books, magazines, newspaper, and pamphlets. The collection is a non-circulating resource collection of materials about Southern California in particular with a heavy emphasis on Los Angeles County, including individual cities and unincorporated areas. Fiction by major California writers is included as well as historical fiction about California.