Center for Primary Research and Training Plus
Research Opportunities
The UCLA Library created the Center for Primary Research and Training Plus to integrate its Performing Arts Special Collections more fully into the teaching and research mission of the university. The center provides a substantive educational experience for graduate students by training them in archival methods and enabling them to conduct research with primary source material in their areas of interest. The center was launched with a generous grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
The students work with unprocessed or under-processed collections in their areas of expertise to fully organize and describe their contents; the resulting finding aids are made available online, which allows researchers at UCLA and beyond to more easily access information about the collections' contents. Students are employed in the center for an entire academic year, which they spend working with large, detailed collections. They are compensated at a rate competitive with similar on-campus employment options such as teaching and research assistantships.
Performing Arts Special Collections encompasses archival materials in dance, film, music, television, and theater. Strengths include archives of leading Southern California film and television studios; archives of Southern California composers; documentation of the Los Angeles jazz scene; film, radio, and television scripts; personal papers of prominent directors, performers, producers, and writers; and the Archive of Popular American Music, which contains sheet music and recordings covering the history of American music from 1790 to the present.
What the Center Does
- enhances access to collections, thus revealing "hidden collections"
- utilizes the energy, ambition, and subject knowledge of students to fill gaps in expertise
- promotes Performing Arts Special Collections as fundamental to the mission of the university by emphasizing that scholarly research ultimately depends on the availability of primary sources
- better informs university administrators, faculty, and members of the wider community about special collections holdings
How to Apply
The deadline for appointments for the 2008-09 academic year is September 30, 2008.
An information sheet and application form can be downloaded in Adobe PDF format.
For information about collections available for processing, contact Kathleene Konkle, Coordinator, Center for Primary Resource Training Plus, by phone at 310.206.4046 or by email at kkonkle@library.ucla.edu.
