Exhibit Catalog California Collections (Classic Reprint) PDF Download

Author: Dan Luckenbill
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781331744726
Category : Reference
Languages : en
Pages : 42

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Book Description
Excerpt from Exhibit Catalog California Collections In the past sixty years at Westwood, the university library at UCLA has grown in prominence to be ranked second only to Harvard's among the Association of Research Libraries. Through a succession of eminent librarians, the library has developed its resources for research in subject areas as diverse as the Los Angeles community itself. While Los Angeles was founded in 1781, records were not kept here, and institutions in the north - archives and libraries - were much stronger in state history before those in the south. UCLA has many early records of Los Angeles, including microfilm of the Los Angeles Star, but the manuscripts collecting concentration over the years has been on more recent and more local events, creators, and personalities. Time has proved this to be correct since Los Angeles itself has moved into the forefront of the worlds cities and interest in research here has grown so greatly. Beginning with the first university librarian, John Goodwin, special collections and special materials were accepted for the library before there was a Department of Special Collections. The Robert Ernest Cowan collection of Californiana, for example, was purchased in 1936. Special materials, such as the records of the Sleepy Lagoon Defense Committee, were also accepted during the formative years of the library. By 1945 enough material had been collected to justify one of the Acquisitions Departments librarians functioning half-time as a manuscripts librarian. A year later, the library established a separate Department of Special Collections because the demand for use of rare books and manuscripts in the UCLA library made their separate curating and reference a necessity. A succession of Special Collections department heads, under Lawrence Clark Powell, librarian, bookman, writer, and friend of writers and printers, were ready to receive and solicit additional materials, especially from the diverse groups who were establishing themselves in Los Angeles. Time has proved their selections to be astute as well. UCLA has many records of motion pictures, including an early record of Black motion picture productions in the George P.Johnson collection. The Sleepy Lagoon Defense Committee records continue to absorb scholars interested in Chicano studies. In the1970s a cooperative venture led to the acceptance and hoasing of the unique Japanese American Research Project records. Faculty members were interested in non-traditional and popular literature and this interest proved to be another wise collecting step for the Department. In 1953 Wilbur J. Smith wrote Raymond Chandler to ask for manuscripts; Chandler sent them. James V.Mink, my immediate predecessor, also continued to develop the UCLA Oral History Program, administered by this Department. Almost 400 oral history transcripts support virtually all areas here mentioned, and those highlighted in this exhibit. I am pleased to introduce this exhibit and catalog, on the occasion of the Manuscript Society annual meeting, on behalf of those creators and collectors I have now joined. The exhibition represents a cross-section of this departments holdings which themselves reflect Los Angeles as a magnet for multitudinous cultures. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com