Exhibit - Salute to WWII Flying Tigers in China

American Archives Month

Cal State LA's Table at the Archive Bazaar October 15, 2016

    

     Cal State LA Special Collections and Archives has had a busy October. We've participated in multiple events for American Archives Month including the 11th Annual Los Angeles Archives Bazaar held at USC and the Heritage Square Museum 13th Annual Halloween Mourning Tours.

     At the Archives Bazaar, we joined other Los Angeles institutions to celebrate the diverse history of our city. Our table highlighted our East LA Archives, a group of collections primarily documenting the Chicano Movement in East LA in the 1960s and 70s, our Compton Communicative Arts Academy Archive, and our new digitization initiatives.



    

    

Books displayed at the Heritage Square Museum October 22, 2016

     At the Heritage Square Museum Halloween event, we exhibited books and materials about Fall customs in the 19th and early 20th century. We also put on a Victorian Fall dinner party of our own.

 

Cal State LA buttons at the Archives Bazaar

 

Special Collections and Archives Internship Opportunity - Application Deadline November 1st

Interested in archives, curatorship, and special collections librarianship? Apply for the Cal State LA Special Collections and Archives Internship!

The internship is designed to enrich the use, awareness, and professional training in primary sources. Professional internships allow undergraduate and graduate students to gain new insights into the nature of archival practice by engaging in meaningful work under the supervision of the Archives and Special Collections staff.


Two students will be selected from the applicants through a formal application and interviewing process. Successful applicants will be matched with collections in their field and specialization. Interns will be required to work 15 to 20 hours a week Monday - Friday during spring semester 2017. Interns will be paid a stipend of $1,650.00. Seniors and graduate students are preferred.


Internship includes:
Archival Processing

• Training in archival processing practices under the supervision of the University Library archivist.
• Arranging, describing, and cataloging collections in one's area of research and interest.
• Creating finding aids, once a collection has been processed, for online publication.

Metadata and Digitization

• Digitizing selected collections and entering metadata under the supervision of the Digitization Projects Assistant

Exhibitions

• Provide support for the production of the exhibitions program encompassing areas of project management, curatorial practice, exhibition design, and installation

Interns will have two major projects during the duration of the internship. Interns will have the option of selecting one project from the Archival Processing or Metadata and Digitization category. Interns will work together on developing and curating an exhibition. Interns will have the ability to customize their internship experience with their interests and educational objectives.


Requirements:

• Undergraduate seniors, Graduate or professional students, currently enrolled at Cal State LA are eligible to apply. History, English, and Art majors preferred.
• Excellent organizational skills, goal-oriented with ability to wok independently with close attention to detail.
• Have excellent written and oral communication skills.
• Interest in archival, librarianship, curatorial, and digitization work.

Application Requirements:

• Resume
• Cover Letter explaining why you want to be an intern in Special Collections and Archives and what you can offer this department.
  

Submission of Application:

Deadline to submit your application materials (Resume and Cover Letter) is November 1, 2016. Please contact the University Library Archivist, Azalea Camacho, at azalea.camacho@calstatela.edu for more information or to apply.

Exhibit - The Master & the King: Edgar Rice Burroughs, the Master of Storytelling, and His Greatest Creation, Tarzan King of the Apes

The exhibit will end on October 28th.
    

     Edgar Rice Burroughs (1875-1950) was an American adventure writer most famous for his character Tarzan. The Tarzan stories have been adapted into comic books, countless movies, and television programs. He also created John Carter of Mars, a character that has inspired the likes of George Lucas (creator of Star Wars) and noted scientist Carl Sagan (Cosmos). Our exhibit highlights different visual representations of Burroughs’s work, especially in comic books.

     Even though today we know Burroughs as one of the most widely read authors of the 20^th century, he found his calling later in life. He published his first story at the age of 36. Before he became a fiction writer, Burroughs was an honorably discharged soldier, a Gatling gun instructor, a door-to-door salesman, a pencil sharpener peddler for Sears Roebuck, and many other disparate professions. As an avid reader of pulp magazines, Burroughs became convinced that he could write stories just as good, if not better, than published ones. He later commented in the Washington Post, “if people were paid for writing such rot as I read, I could write stories just as rotten.” Burroughs could not have predicted the tremendous impact that his work would have on popular culture.

Insights From PCC Interns: Javier Barrios

I was fortunate to have interned at Cal State LA's Special Collections & Archives, and even more fortunate to have had Azalea Camacho and Jamie Zeffery as my supervisors.  Their knowledge, guidance and expertise provided an ideal environment that resulted in my getting the best possible digitization learning experience.

The workflow of digitizing the College Times/University Times newspapers, from handling the original newspapers, to operating a Zeutschel OS 12002 scanner to digitize the newspapers, to creating the metadata for the newspapers, and finally, uploading the PDF derivatives and TIFF images onto DSpace for publication, was a seamless and thorough process that solidified my understanding of digitization.  Everything that had been covered in the classes I took toward my certificate, was pretty much put into practice during my internship.

But the internship also served as a lesson in sociology.  In digitizing the newspapers--I worked mostly on issues from the 1960's and 70's--I learned a great deal about the history of Cal State LA, and was pleasantly surprised by just how progressive this campus has been all along.  Long before the issue of women's rights, and more recently, diversity inclusion, became mainstream topics, the campus newspaper constantly spotlighted people such as Cesar Chavez and issues like the migrant workers' movement.  As a person of color, it made me proud to be a part of this institution--even if it was just for a summer--with such a rich and moral history.

On the nostalgic front, I got to see issues with ads for films such as Jaws and Westworld, and I got to read an amazing Jaws film review.  I also got to see a photo of the band Rush when they played on campus in 1973, almost a year before their first album was released.

I can't say enough good things about my experience here during the last few months.  Again, I want to thank Jamie and Azalea for making me feel welcome, and for providing me with a tremendous opportunity.

Insights From PCC Interns: Anabel

As my Digitization summer internship comes to a close here at the Special Collections and Archives Department within the Library at Cal State LA, I begin to think back about what my experience has been like.

I am currently trying to complete a Digitization Skills Certification Program at Pasadena City College. Coming in as an intern after taking classes has brought me an improved understanding of the Digitization process that is occurring within Special Collections and Archives. With our ever increasing reliance on technology for a variety of information ranging from entertainment to academic purposes, it is important to create access to tangible historical material as well. Cultural institutions and libraries want to bring to the public the types of objects that typically have limited access for preservation purposes or are housed in locations too distant for most of the public to come and see.

Working on the University Times and Thesis collections at Cal State LA has taught me a lot of new things that I hadn’t encountered or thought of before. While trying to upload some of the University Times Collection online, we ran into a problem accessing a hard drive where data had been stored. Although the staff was ultimately able to recover the data stored in the hard drive, this taught us all the importance of backing up digital files. Steps were taken to make sure the files were backed up several times using different methods, such as additional hard drives and cloud storage.

This internship has also allowed me the opportunity of working on scanning, metadata, and uploading. I was able to catch errors on newspapers and improve upon past metadata gathering. What I especially liked working on was the workflows for different digitization processes. It simplified and detailed the process which is very helpful to avoid any inconsistencies or mistakes. These were the types of details I was hoping to encounter during my internship as classes can only teach so much. I hope to continue learning about this field and to further my education in archival studies.

Insights From PCC Interns: Anabel

My name is Anabel and I’m a summer Digitization Intern at Cal State LA’s Special Collections and Archives. I have focused my internship on learning about metadata and digitizing several collections for the library including the University Times Newspaper Collection and the Thesis Collection. The University Times has evolved and changed its focus many times throughout its history.

As a former undergraduate student of Cal State LA, I would pick up the University Times on my way to class. I can tell you that the paper you see now is quite different from what you would've seen in 1956. There were many stories and advertisements that raised eyebrows, such as a recurring article featuring bikini models (no article), and a rental advertisement for a 2 bedroom apartment near campus for $75.00 a month!

But it’s the end of summer, and many local students are trying to squeeze the most out of the last week by going to amusement parks. It turns out that things weren’t so different back in 1956. In the University Times Issue for July 16, 1956, Disneyland and Marineland were promoted to attract student visitors before school started in the fall. Disneyland had only been open for a year and was trying to bring more local visitors to the park by boasting about Mark Twain and Sleeping Beauty’s Castle.  If you made a reservation, you could enter Disneyland for $1! However, what I found interesting was the second amusement park, Marineland in Palos Verdes.

The story features a photo of a diver going underwater to feed a dolphin. The details of the diving gear alone was enough to catch my attention. Marineland was an oceanarium that housed many sea creatures and displayed them to the public. It needed to pump millions of gallons of sea water to maintain their animals. If any of the animals died, they were replaced. Entry to Marineland was just 25 cents with a reservation.

What became of the Marineland in this article? After further research, I learned it was later bought by Sea World San Diego in 1986 with promises to keep the park open. However, within just 6 weeks of the sale, Sea World closed the park, took the two Orca’s in Marineland, “Orky” and “Corky”, along with all other animals in the middle of the night and abandoned the park altogether.  “Corky” became one of the many orcas to adopt the name “Shamu” and become part of Sea World’s Shamu Show.

Insights From PCC Interns : Rochelle

This is my last day as an intern and in the past few weeks I've learned so much about what was happening on this campus and across the United States from the early to mid 1970s. This internship has also reinvigorated my interest in history and now I am considering pursuing degrees in either conservation or archival studies. 


For the past four to five weeks I've been digitizing campus newspapers from 1975-1976. I thought using the Zeutschel OS 12002 scanner would be way more complicated than it actually was. The Zeutschel is a very large and ominous looking machine that can handle digitizing large books and newspapers. During my second week of scanning Jamie discovered a more efficient way of scanning the newspapers that saved us so much time. I won't go into details but this discovery made me realize how important it is to keep track of new methods and decisions that are made during a Digitization project. It makes it easier for everyone involved and for those down the road. I also realized that there are going to be things you don't plan for like finding newspapers with missing pages, or newspapers with incorrect dates or newspapers that are in poor condition. I had to adapt quickly. While the classes I've taken at Pasadena City College have definitely prepared me for this internship there are certain things you can't prepare for. So you have to take things as they come and adjust accordingly.

Insights from PCC Interns: Rochelle

 My name is Rochelle and I am one of the Digitization Interns here at Special Collections. For the past few weeks I've been creating metadata for the 1973 issues of the University Times. The articles I've come across have been mostly political in nature and I've found it all very fascinating especially since many of the problems I came across then still resonate today.

There were a couple of stories that spanned more than a single article that caught my eye so it was difficult for me to choose just one. However, I did find the controversy surrounding teacher evaluations odd mostly because it's something that I've taken for granted. Yet during this time period  there was a lot of push back against them on this campus. I came across several articles that addressed fears about a student publication called "A Student's Guide to his Teachers" that consisted of teacher evaluations sold at the Trident Shop. The booklet of evaluations was created by the Underground Evaluation Committee of the School of Business and Economics.

I got a better sense of how the evaluations were perceived from Letter to the Editors. There were a number of professors who were against the evaluations because they believed that the statements found in the booklet were defamatory. There were also concerns that the students who participated in the surveys were anonymous. One professor, a Dr. Gene B. Tipton, wrote in a letter (August 3, 1973) addressed to the editor that if there was a publication called "Guide to Students" that many students on campus would be outraged. Dr. Tipton was concerned about the anonymity of the students and that the publication was sold. The latter concern led one student to write a letter to the editor in response.

 In the August 10, 1973 issue, a student by the name of Stephen L. Bloch wrote that students were often punished for speaking their minds. He thought that the evaluations showed that having a Ph.D doesn't mean that professors can teach well. He then challenged Dr. Tipton to present her own statistics that showed that many professors in the department were against the evaluations. I wasn't able to find a response from Dr. Tipton but the booklet sold really well at the Trident Shop.

Stan Kenton Display in Special Collections and Archives

The display is in celebration of the Jazz Orchestra 1^st Annual Tribute to Stan Kenton performed on June 2^nd 2016 at the State Playhouse. The items displayed, along with many others from the Stan Kenton Collection of Musical Recordings & Personal Papers, were exhibited at the event. Some notable highlights include a recording of City of Glass and an extensive catalogue of photographs depicting the early days of Kenton’s seminal band, Artistry in Rhythm. 

The JFK Memorial Library Special Collections and Archives is proud of its ongoing collaboration with the Music Department and the College of Arts and Letters to preserve and promote this exceptional collection.

More more information on Stan Kenton, please visit our main website here.

Poetry Month Events

Happy Poetry Month, Cal State LA!

Please stop by and check out our exhibit on Los Angeles Poet Edna Anderson at Special Collections and Archives, the University Library, Palmer Wing, 2nd Floor

We’re also sponsoring Poetry Under the Sky. Cal State LA student Matthew Mejia will read from his recently published poetry collection theFEEL on Wenesday, April 27, 2016 at 3:15pm at the Library 4th Floor Balcony. There will be a Q&A and book signing immediately after the event.

Exhibit - Holy City Adrift: Thomas McGrath's Los Angeles

Poetry, Politics, and Place at Cal State Los Angeles
March 28 - June 12, 206
1st Floor, Library North

The English Department presents an exhibit highlighting the life and legacy of poet and former professor, Thomas McGrath.