The UCLA Library and the June L. Mazer Lesbian Archives have launched an outreach and collection-building partnership, which will expand access to collections held by the Mazer Archives and expand the Library's holdings in this important area of social and cultural history. The Mazer Archives is the largest major archive on the West Coast dedicated to preserving and promoting lesbian and feminist history and culture.
The partnership draws on the strengths of each organization: the Mazer Archives to identify collections, solicit donors, and provide expertise; and the Library to process collections, preserve their contents, and make them broadly accessible. The project has begun with the creation of finding aids for and digitization of the collections of Connexus Women’s Center/Centro de Mujeres, Southern California Women for Understanding, and Women Against Violence Against Women and the papers of Margaret Cruikshank and Lillian Faderman, all of which are accessible via the Digital Library portal.
The UCLA Library has announced an innovative project to gather, preserve, interpret, and make accessible its collections documenting the remarkable multiplicity of cultures and at-risk hidden histories of the Los Angeles region.
"Collecting Los Angeles," the first project to be made possible by a recent $5 million gift from the Arcadia Fund (see below) intended to support transformational changes in the UCLA Library's collections and the services that support them, will build on the Library's existing strengths in this area, which encompass special collections, photo archives, oral histories, maps, and circulating materials on local history, government, politics, and literary, performing, and visual arts.
The new initiative's curator will be Susan Anderson, an accomplished historian, author, editor, and project manager who has consulted for the California State Parks Foundation and the California Endowment and curated a statewide touring exhibition on the African American community of Allensworth, California. Most recently, she served as managing director of the "LA as Subject" program at the USC Libraries. Anderson, who has taught at Pitzer College, received her bachelor's degree from Scripps College and her MBA from the UCLA Anderson School of Management.
The UCLA Library has acquired the literary papers of the Los Angeles novelist, short-story writer, and screenwriter John Fante (1909–83). The collection contains his manuscripts for books, short stories and screenplays; personal letters; business records, including book contracts; and memorabilia.
The literary materials in the collection encompass all the manuscripts that are known to exist for Fante's novels, short stories, and screenplays, many of them featuring Fante's annotations, as well as proofs for his books and copies of the magazines in which his stories appeared. Among the items of memorabilia are Fante's typewriter and pencil, his Screen Writers Guild (later Writers Guild) membership certificates, numerous photographs, and a lock of his hair.
The materials will be housed in the Charles E. Young Research Library Department of Special Collections, where they complement holdings of papers and books by other authors associated with California and Los Angeles, including Raymond Chandler, Nathanael West, Horace McCoy, and Fante's close friend Carey McWilliams.
The UCLA Library has acquired the literary archive of the visionary novelist and essayist Aldous Huxley (1894–1963). The collection contains literary materials he created subsequent to a devastating 1961 fire that destroyed his Los Angeles home and much of his earlier archive; correspondence, photographs, and audio tapes; and typescripts and galley proofs retrieved from publishers after his death. Also included are the papers of his wife, Laura Huxley (1911–2007), an author and lay therapist.
The literary materials include manuscripts and working papers for twelve books, including his final novel, Island; thirty-five essays, articles, and speeches; and thirty-one lectures. Among hundreds of letters are love letters between the writer and his wife. There are recordings of many of his lectures and of him reading from his novel Time Must Have a Stop (1944) and English and French poetry. The archive also contains a travel diary, four personal notebooks, and personal effects, including his British passport, a magnifying glass, fountain pens, and a leather wallet.
The archive was acquired with funds provided by Bill Edwards, a 1961 graduate of UCLA and a member of the UCLA Library's board of visitors and the Powell Society. It joins the Aldous Huxley Papers already held by the Charles E. Young Research Library Department of Special Collections.
The UCLA Library has received the largest single gift for collections in its history: $5 million from the Arcadia Fund. Gift funds will be used to support efforts to further develop and preserve collections and make them accessible.
Among the possibilities under discussion are projects that build new collections, enhance existing ones, repurpose already digitized materials, expand digitization efforts into new areas of concentration, and explore and develop new types of recorded knowledge. Funds may also be used to enhance end-user discovery of UCLA Library holdings, encourage the use of materials in novel ways, leverage new technology to attract broader audiences to use them in instruction and scholarship, and manage and make accessible scholarship in new formats.
The Arcadia Fund's key mission is the preservation of cultural knowledge and materials and environmental conservation. This includes near-extinct languages, rare historical archives and museum-quality artifacts, and the protection of ecosystems and environments threatened with extinction. Arcadia has made several major donations to the UCLA Library to support the Center for Primary Research and Training in the Charles E. Young Research Library Department of Special Collections, the most recent being a significant gift in 2008 to the endowment supporting the program.
Online reference is now available twenty-four hours a day seven days a week through the UCLA Library’s membership in the national 24/7 Academic Reference Cooperative. The Library is partnering with other UC campuses and librarians around the world to provide this newly enhanced service. Because it is staffed by external as well as UCLA librarians, questions may be referred to the UCLA Library for further assistance, in which case a UCLA Library staff member will follow-up within twenty-four hours.
The UCLA Library has appointed Kevin Mulroy as associate university librarian for academic services. He took up his new position November 24.
Mulroy comes to UCLA from the University of Southern California, where he worked since 2001 in a number of positions, including assistant dean of contracts and grants and associate executive director of research collections and services. His responsibilities included implementing a strategic plan that created an integrated approach to collections and services and leading the collections, reference, instructional, and outreach activities of interdisciplinary teams of subject librarians in the arts and humanities, science and engineering, and the social sciences.
Mulroy has written or edited four books on African American history and Western film and many articles and essays on American history. He earned an MA in U.S. history and politics and a PhD in American studies from Keele University in England and an MLS from Rutgers University.
The position of associate university librarian for academic services has been created by restructuring the areas of responsibility of the UCLA Library’s existing associate university librarian positions. In broad terms its duties encompass leadership, management, and policy development for public services and collections in support of faculty and graduate students in the social sciences, humanities, and area studies.
Mulroy can be reached by phone at 310.825.1201 or by email.