Archives – Page 8 – SJSU SAASC

Archives of the Month : The Los Angeles Contemporary…

by SAASC Team

This is the start of a series highlighting lesser-known or unique archives; what we’d like to call Archives of the Month. Our September archives is LACA: The Los Angeles Contemporary Archive. It is a small, intimate space located in Chinatown, Los Angeles which houses over 33,000 art objects, ephemera, digital media, writing, and more within 83 different collections. Established in 2013, their mission “challenges established concepts of the archive and art institution, sustaining a unique experimental environment for critical inquiry, artistic research, and public dialogue” (LACA, 2020). The objects resting on the shelves and in storage boxes here represent the Southern California region. What makes this archives noteworthy is that anyone can add to this collection, including yourself. You can submit a piece online here or visit the center in person.

Browsing through the digital collections, you might find a flyer for a party, a pamphlet from an archives in Hong Kong, or a soundtrack for a musical documentary. Ariane Vielmetter submitted the photograph shown on the left from the Visitor Welcome Center founded by David Bell in 2016.

Creating an archives without traditional limitations that can actively preserve a small piece of individual artistic expression is a heartening achievement. LACA recently held a show in 2021 called reCourse Work which began as “an open call for artists, authors, and performers to share ephemera related to their process of creating course work, lessons and syllabi” (LACA, 2020). LACA hosts events regularly, inviting community engagement on topics familiar to many in Southern California including immigration, documentation, wealth inequality, religion, and ethnicity.

We hope you’ll take a few minutes to check out LACA and learn about their collections!

References

LACA. (2020). Website. Accessed September 2022. https://www.lacarchive.com/

Vielmetter, A. (2022). [Photograph]. Image Accessed through LACA September 2022. https://www.lacarchive.com/item/photograph

Lavacoalition.art (n.d.). LACA. Photograph. Image accessed September 2022 from website. https://lavacoalition.art/Los-Angeles-Contemporary-Archive-LACA

Welcome Fall 2022!

by SAASC Team

Welcome all new and returning students to the San Jose University 2022-2023 school year! It is an exciting time of year for most of us, and especially for all the archivists and archives enthusiasts out there! As I write this, the Society for American Archivists is holding its yearly conference in Boston, Massachusetts. This year is the first-ever hybrid conference featuring both onsite and remote/virtual elements. Keep in mind I am writing this on August 26^th, and by the time you all are blessed with the online publication of this blog, the event will be over.

Going back to the idea of a hybrid conference, some live sessions were recorded for virtual access and there were other fully virtual sessions in addition to the in-person sessions. What’s cool about that is that the recorded sessions will be available to all SAA members in the education part of the SAA website!

Our SJSU SAASC group saw almost all our executive board members able to attend this year. Sheralyn Milton, one of our Social Media Coordinators, highlighted the following session that she found impressive:

204: Enormous Change: Disaster Recovery

“Disaster is often the best catalyst for necessary change. Often the lack of funding is the reason why archives are not properly housed and cared for. It is once disaster strikes and collections are lost or in imminent danger that administration finally brings about the needed change that has often been begged after for years. Disaster also allows for minimal changes that makes the archives friendlier, more easily accessible, and safer since we often do not see the need to make important but minimal changes until forced”.

-Sheralyn Milton

I do not think we can stress enough how important emergency planning and strategic planning can be when it comes to anyone working in the information profession. The better we plan, the better we can lead, communicate, and stave off unforeseen disasters. Thank you for sharing with us Sheralyn!

I invite anyone who attended the conference this year to drop us a line on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, Tik Tok, or message us and share any sessions that you found to be particularly helpful or intuitive. We would love to hear from you!

We also want to mention two posters presented by past SJSU SAASC board members. The poster entitled Challenging the Status Quo: Innovative Approaches to Online Engagement that SAASC members Rachael Sevilla, Diana Haney, Heather Reinold, Sereen Suleiman, Erin Castillo, and Jennifer Galipo presented at the SAA conference. The poster showcased the virtual events that SAASC executive board members introduced last year to foster student engagement that we plan to continue this year. More of that to come! Jenny Galipo also presented a poster entitled Starting a Digital Archive in a Community-based Archive. Let’s give them a big round of virtual applause!

Do not even get us started on Erin Castillo! She received the 2022 Harold T. Pinkett Student of Color Award from SAA this year, and we are all so proud. That award helped pay her way to attend SAA, and she did an Instagram takeover about the conference, so be sure to check that out on our SAASC Instagram account!

Our next topic concerns the advantages of joining SAA. As I mentioned earlier: planning is key, and that includes planning for your own future career! The SAA student membership includes these benefits, as stated on the SAA website:

“Full access to American Archivist Online
A complimentary subscription to Archival Outlook
Member discounts on Annual Meeting and course/webcast registration
Member discounts on SAA-published books
Participation in SAA Sections
Participation in SAA’s Mentoring Program

Student members are also eligible:

To hold any appointive position in the Society
To vote for officers, councilors, members of the nominating committee
To vote on all matters requiring a vote which come before the Society as a whole
To be members of constituent units of the Society
To receive the benefits of the Society’s programs and services”(SAA, 2022).

Thanks for reading the blog! If you would like more information about SJSU SAASC, check out the Student Group Meet and Greet on Thursday, September 1^st from 6pm to 7pm. We are also having our Annual SJSU SAASC Membership Meeting on September 21^st at 6pm. We look forward to seeing you there!

If you would like to join SJSU SAASC, find out more here.

Reference

SAA. (2022). Student membership. Website. Accessed August 2022. https://www2.archivists.org/membership/student

Farewell SAASC!

by SAASC Team

Author: Sereen Suleiman

Time flies by so fast! It seems like only yesterday I assumed the role of SAASC Blog Editor. Now here I am writing my final blog contribution to SAASC. It was an honor and a privilege to be the blog editor for the year and having the responsibility to cover all the major guest speaker events we hosted. Shout out to vice chair Jenny Galipo for doing an exceptional job in recruiting speakers! To hear from the likes of Jennifer Thompson from the J. Paul Getty Museum and Cyndi Shein from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, Libraries, to Craig Simpson from SJSU’s Civil Rights Special Collections and Alex Soto from the Labriola National American Indian Data Center, having the opportunity to be a part of the SAASC team was an insightful and incredible experience.

As my final words, I would like to say that being the blog editor not only improved my writing skills, but also my leadership skills. Since I had the sole responsibility of publishing the blogs in a timely manner, it was crucial for me to communicate with my fellow SAASC board members should there be any changes or developments. In doing so, though, we formed close ties with one another, which makes it all the more heartbreaking that this is our final month together.

And now, I come to my thank you’s. Thank you to Barbara Alvarado Gonzalez for being an awesome chair and leading the team with poise and confidence. Thank you to Jenny for networking with all the guest speakers. Thank you to Robin Seefeldt for being an exceptional webmaster. Thank you to Rachael Sevilla for hosting the scavenger hunt and transcription events. Thank you to Diana Haney for archiving all our event recordings. Thank you to Erin Castillo for being on top of all the social media channels. Thank you to Heather Reinold for working in the social media and Archeota teams. Thank you to Kelli Roisman for managing Archeota for so many years. And finally, thank you to all our SAASC members and the iSchool student community. We could have never come so far as we did without your continuous support. On behalf of the SAASC 2021-2022 team, good luck with the rest of your spring semester and have an amazing summer break! As to the incoming 2022-2023 board, we wish you all the best of luck, and we look forward to seeing what you’ll bring to SAASC next year.

With that, here are final thoughts from the 2021-2022 SAASC team members:

“SAASC is just the beginning. I’m looking forward to seeing and meeting you all in future library endeavors and associations. Here’s to endless exploration and always challenging yourself.”

Erin Castillo, Social Media Coordinator

“Being a part of the SAASC executive board has been an enriching and invaluable experience! A BIG thank you to my team for their hard work and dedication. Also, thank you to all the iSchool faculty and staff who helped us along the way. I look forward to crossing paths with you all in the near future.”

Barbara Alvarado Gonzalez, Chair

“Thank you for the opportunity to be a part of the SAASC executive board; I have learned so much! It has been wonderful getting to know everyone and I can’t wait to see what the future holds for you all.”

Diana Haney, Secretary

Indigenous History at the Labriola Preservation Center: Featuring Alex…

by SAASC Team

Author: Sereen Suleiman

On April 20, 2022, SAASC held the last guest speaker event of the semester, in which we were honored to host Alexander Soto (Tohono O’odham), the director of the Labriola National American Indian Data Center at Arizona State University (ASU) Library. As Soto said, the center is a “library within a library.” According to Soto, the university was built on Native American land, specifically the land belonging to the O’odham tribe (O’odham meaning people or community), leading founder, Frank Labriola, to establish a library at the university dedicated to preserving indigenous culture. This resulted in the development of the Labriola Center in 1933. Later on, Frank set up an endowment, and the funds from the endowment enabled the center to create collections for housing indigenous records.

Since its inception in 1993, the Labriola Center has become an essential service to ASU’s indigenous community. The primary purpose of the center is to support scholarship and instruction on indigenous knowledge across all disciplines at ASU. In fact, the settings and landscape cultivate this through the following:

A separate area in the library for research consultation.
A customized table reflecting indigenous culture.
Books touching on native topics and native themes.
A distinctive manuscript collection, some of which are very unique. Some even help people write in their languages, which is significant because the languages are being forgotten.

Furthermore, there are five notable collections in Labriola:

Simon J. Ortiz Papers, 1946-1992: contains the writing, research, and correspondence of indigenous poet, Simon Ortiz.
Peterson Zah Collection, 1969-1994: contains the professional papers, correspondence, newspaper articles, photographs, and audiovisual materials of politician, Peterson Zah.
Trudie Jackson Papers, 2018: contains campaign materials, flyers, notebooks, and agendas describing Jackson’s campaign for the Navajo Nation Presidency.
Dorothy Parker Papers, 1976-1991: contains publications, documents, transcripts, photographs, and a student yearbook, with the bulk of the materials dedicated to the closure of the Phoenix Indian School.
Elizabeth Brandt Mount Graham Papers, 1990-1991: contains legal documents, correspondence, photographs, research, and Brandt’s writings depicting her efforts to stop the construction of telescopes on Apache land.

What drives Soto, as well as the rest of the archivists and librarians at Labriola, is the mission to advocate for the Native American community and in doing so, keeping indigenous cultures and traditions alive for future generations. Due to colonizers rewriting the history of the natives, nearly wiping out their heritage, language, and customs as a result, it has only become more imperative to preserve indigenous records that will honor Native Americans’ history and contributions. Archives are powerful tools, because selected records have the ability to tell stories of a person, event, place, and a community of people. Thanks to repositories such as the Labriola Center, indigenous communities can share their records, knowing that their stories will be told with the respect and appreciation they deserve.

To end with a quote from Dr. Maria Montenegro, “Unsettling evidence–to question its materiality, conception, legitimacy, objectivity, authority, and originality–are anticolonial endeavors that can lead to archival decolonial thought and praxis.”

Indigenous community at ASU. Photo provided by Alex Soto.

A Look Inside the Writers’ Guild Foundation: Featuring Hilary…

by SAASC Team

Author: Sereen Suleiman

We all have our favorite movies, television shows, and video games. But why are they memorable to us? Is it the characters? The genre? The plot? All those traits are integral to making a spectacular entertainment feature. However, what I and many other people truly believe contributes to a movie or television series’ success is the screenplay, the written script. Making a screenplay is no easy feat, and sometimes, it can be challenging to avoid those cheesy one-liners. This is where teams of brilliant screenwriters come into play to bring characters to life in genuine, meaningful ways. Without them, Hollywood would not be recognized as the “entertainment capital of the world.” Therefore, it only seems fit to preserve these writings, so the writers can receive the recognition they deserve. Of course, there are also collectors and film researchers intrigued by screenwriters, as well as average citizens who simply want to dive more into their favorite characters’ worlds by examining scripts. Institutions such as the Writers’ Guild Foundation (WGF) exist for this very purpose, which brings us to the topic of our event.

On Tuesday, March 15, 2022, the SAASC team proudly hosted Writers’ Guild Foundation archivist and writer, Hilary Swett, who happens to be an SJSU iSchool alum. During her speech, she explains more about the foundation’s origins, its purpose, all the scripts it contains, and the repository’s procedures.

About WGF

They are a nonprofit founded by a prestigious group of screen and television writers. The WGF staff work closely with, but are not a part of the Writers’ Guild of America (WGA). The library consists of over 40,000 cataloged, produced scripts: 32,000 episodes, 5,800 films, 1,300 radio scripts, and dozens of web series and video game scripts. Additionally, there are 3,000 books on writing, writers, and the entertainment industry, and 1,400 recorded programs and seminars.

Pilot scripts are also available and are commonly used for historical research, because early drafts of scripts show how ideas and characters evolved over time. When it comes to writers, Billy Wilder is one of their treasures. For those who don’t know, he wrote the screenplays for the films Sunset Boulevard and Some Like it Hot.

To keep the collection relevant, they track what people read. Breaking Bad is still pretty popular as well as Game of Thrones. Classic, well-written scripts maintain their popularity. And yes, there are Marvel movie scripts. However, it is important to keep in mind that the foundation must ask for scripts, so they don’t have everything.

Who uses the library?

Here is a general list of some of WGF’s frequent visitors:

WGAW Members
Journalists
Historians and biographers
Students
Academic researchers
Upcoming TV/film writers

Services

The WGF is open to the public five days a week from Tuesdays-Saturdays. However, it is a non-circulating library, meaning they are only involved as special collections and archives. Their items cannot be given out nor accessed online due to copyright from studios. Therefore, if you wish to read any of their scripts, you can only do so in-person at the foundation which is in Los Angeles. That being said, the library is currently closed due to COVID-19 restrictions, and we are unsure when they will reopen.

For more information about the WGF, please visit their website. For anyone who lives in Los Angeles, hopefully the drive is not too far away. The WGF is the ideal place for librarians and archivists who are fascinated with the entertainment industry!

Category: <span>Archives</span>

Archives of the Month : The Los Angeles Contemporary…

Welcome Fall 2022!

Farewell SAASC!

Indigenous History at the Labriola Preservation Center: Featuring Alex…

A Look Inside the Writers’ Guild Foundation: Featuring Hilary…

Become a SAASC member today!