On the third floor of the University Library at Cal State Long Beach, a secluded reading room sits tucked into a corner few people notice. Beyond it, a storage room, once known as \u201cthe vault,\u201d holds thousands of books and boxes, stacked and labeled, waiting to be called up.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Inside those boxes: a 1490 witch-hunting manual, its pages marked with wormholes and notes in the margins. Sealed World War II rations. The political papers of former congressman and CSULB psychology professor Alan Lowenthal. A felt pennant given to the second-place winner of the 1908 \u201cLong Beach Festival of the Sea\u201d baby parade. A rare copy of “The Nuremberg Chronicle.”\u00a0<\/p>\n
This is the Special Collections and University Archives \u2014 a trove that includes countless pieces of Long Beach history and what archivists call one of the largest fine art collections in the CSU system.\u00a0<\/p>\n
They just wish more of the campus community could access it.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
“One aspect that we’re not currently flourishing in is our online presence,\u201d said University Library Dean Elizabeth Dill. \u201cWe are just now starting to build a robust digital repository, providing access to all of these great materials that would normally be under lock and key.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
That effort received a significant boost on Friday, when U.S. Rep. Robert Garcia \u201802, \u201810, visited campus to announce $2.1 million in community project funding aimed squarely at modernizing, digitalizing and expanding the Special Collections.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Garcia said the federal funds would serve as the foundation of a new Long Beach Research Center within the library, \u201coffering hands-on training in archival methods, digitization techniques and historical research to the public\u201d while ensuring that students can access and study research materials \u201cin a dynamic learning environment.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI strongly believe in the power of communities [to access] archives, historical documents \u00a0and the preservation of key materials and artifacts, said Garcia, the ranking member of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. \u201cThere are already documents here that have global impact, that need to be displayed appropriately.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
In addition to expanding the archives\u2019 online presence, Dill said the plan includes remodeling the current space by adding glass walls to open sightlines and converting the adjoining storage room into exhibit and classroom space. The federal funds will not directly pay for additional staff, but Dill said growth remains part of the broader vision.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Over the past year and a half, the two-person team of University Archivist Heather Steele Gajewski and Special Collections Librarian Chlo\u00e9 Pascual has grown to four, with the addition of an archives assistant Briana Vazquez and a dedicated digital archivist, Bennie Allen Stoll.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Together, the team manages the daily demands of the archives: pulling materials for faculty and students, supporting dozens of class visits each semester, responding to outside researchers \u2014 including some who travel internationally \u2014 and processing a steady flow of university records.\u00a0<\/p>\n
They also maintain the campus syllabus archive.\u00a0<\/p>\n
They might receive 18,000 new syllabi in any given school year, Vazquez said. And requests to view them come in every day. \u201cTwo weeks ago, we had over 50 requests. And sometimes these people request five, six, seven, eight syllabi.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Against that backdrop, deeper processing competes for time. Most modern archives, Gajewski explained, include inventories and online finding aids \u2014 road maps that tell researchers what exists and how to request it. \u201cNone of our stuff is heavily utilized,\u201d she said, \u201cbecause we do not have online finding aids.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
That means that while some collections are well known and frequently used in classes, others sit in boxes labeled for systems that no longer exist.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cSometimes we open a box and there\u2019s no folders, and we\u2019re like, \u2018What the heck is this?\u2019\u201d Gajewski said. \u201cAll of it is like a balancing game of trying to be good stewards of these resources while still making them available for research as quickly as we can.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
The work can feel endless but never dull.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI get excited when someone comes in to do independent research on something,\u201d Gajewski said, \u201cbecause it\u2019s an opportunity to uncover things that nobody knew we had.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
She said she enjoys the locally significant finds \u2014 an original adobe brick from San Juan Capistrano, for example \u2014 just as much as the unexplained oddities: a vintage viewfinder featuring \u201cmushrooms in their natural habitats,\u201d a doll wearing a homemade nursing uniform donated by College of Nursing grad, or the now-beloved sculpture of former CSULB President Robert Maxson\u2019s head, found preserved in the bottom of a glass fish tank.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The shelves remain dense. The backlog remains real. But with renewed investment, archivists and librarians are hopeful that the university’s many hidden treasures will eventually find their way into student papers, faculty research and the community\u2019s shared history. \u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"On the third floor of the University Library at Cal State Long Beach, a secluded reading room sits…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":177384,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[1818,1820,7,1815,1823,1821,1822,1819,131,133,132,1817,1816],"class_list":{"0":"post-177383","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-long-beach","8":"tag-49ers","9":"tag-cal-state","10":"tag-california","11":"tag-college","12":"tag-conoley","13":"tag-csu","14":"tag-csulb","15":"tag-dirtbags","16":"tag-long-beach","17":"tag-long-beach-headlines","18":"tag-long-beach-news","19":"tag-long-beach-state","20":"tag-university"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/177383","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=177383"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/177383\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/177384"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=177383"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=177383"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=177383"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}