New on OAC and Calisphere: Local History Digital Resources

CDL is pleased to announce the online publication of approximately 2,000 diverse materials documenting local people, places, and events throughout California in the Online Archive of California (OAC) and Calisphere.

The images were produced during the 2011-2012 Local History Digital Resources Project (LHDRP), a training and digitization program for libraries with local history materials. Over the past year, ten libraries each selected, scanned, and catalogued approximately 200 items for inclusion in OAC, Calisphere, and local websites. They are now broadly available to the UC community and the general public.

The new material spans an array of interesting topics and regions, from photographs of minority communities along the California coast, to records documenting the history of community colleges in the state, to letters penned by students incarcerated in Japanese American internment camps. The following is a summary of collections by institution:

• Beaumont Library District: images depicting historical buildings, structures, railroads, public institutions, ranches, and topography of the Beaumont and Cherry Valley communities.
• Black Gold Cooperative Library System: photographs portraying life on the California Central Coast from 1853 through the 1970s among four major ethnic minority groups: African, Asian, Hispanic, and Native Americans.
• California State University Channel Islands Library: photographs capturing the history of the Filipino community in Ventura County from the ­1900s through the 1990s.
• California State University East Bay Library: Images from various archival record collections, showing the history of the university and student, faculty, and staff life there.
• California State University Fullerton Library: prints and negatives spanning the long history of a leading photography studio and depicting various people and scenes in Orange County, 1882-1853.
• Glendale Public Library: promotional brochures from the early 1900s describing the towns of Glendale and Tropico as idyllic places to live, work, and visit.
• Citrus College, Hayden Memorial Library: papers and photographs documenting the history of Citrus College, originally a high school and later the first community college in Los Angeles County.
• Japanese American National Museum: letters written by Japanese American students who were incarcerated in American internment camps during World War II, addressed to their pre-war teacher.
• Santa Cruz Public library (http://www.calisphere.universityofcalifornia.edu/browse/publisher/Santa+Cruz+Public+Libraries): photographs depicting the first settlers to Scotts Valley and the development of the farming and dairy industries there.

Congratulations to this year’s LHDRP participants!

The LHDRP is supported by the U.S. Institute of Museum and Library Services under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act, administered in California by the State Librarian.  Learn more (http://califa.org/lhdrp.php).

Images (left-right) courtesy of: Black Gold Cooperative Library System; CSU Channel Islands Library; Citrus College, Hayden Memorial Library.