One of the most recent additions to our ever-growing collection of LGBT-focused materials at UCI Special Collections and Archives is the Robert Gentry papers (MS-R167). This collection includes the political and professional records of Robert F. Gentry, the first openly gay elected official in Southern California and the first openly gay mayor in the state of California. Gentry served as city councilman and mayor of the city of Laguna Beach from 1982 to 1994, and also had an important leading role here at UC Irvine as the Associate Dean of Students.

Gentry’s papers show his unwavering commitment and advocacy for gay rights, as well as his involvement in protecting the environment and local neighborhoods.  During his time as mayor, he led efforts in Laguna Beach to enact legislation giving same-sex couples the same rights as heterosexual married couples, and fought to ban discrimination based on sexual orientation in seeking jobs and housing.

Materials from the Robert Gentry papers. Photo by Allan Helmick.

This collection includes correspondence, including hate mail as well as letters of support, sent to Gentry during his time as a public official. Also included are Laguna Beach City Council documents, campaign brochures, numerous awards, speech transcripts and notes, and newspaper clippings. Much of Gentry’s papers were destroyed in the Laguna Beach fire of 1993, but the contents of this collection provide evidence of Gentry’s commitment to gay rights and the environment, and provide important insight into the political and professional life of Southern California’s first openly gay elected official.

This collection is open for research, and the finding aid is located at the Online Archive of California. For more information about our collections and our reading room hours, please visit our website.

Robert Gentry papers. MS-R167. Special Collections and Archives, The UC Irvine Libraries, Irvine, California.

Are you still searching for a topic for your thesis or a major paper?  Do you want to conduct serious, original research in unique, historical archives?   If so, there are many fascinating primary sources in the UCI Libraries Special Collections and Archives that deserve your attention in your next research project. You can even win $500 when you write a paper based on these archival collections.

Two $500 research awards are available, one for a UCI undergraduate and one for a UCI graduate student.  To apply, submit a completed research paper based on extensive archival research in the UCI Libraries Special Collections and Archives’ collections before Friday, June 14, 2013.  Winning papers will be published online in eScholarship.

Special Collections and Archives collects archives from many significant individuals and organizations. Some examples:

• Critical theory (including the papers of Jacques Derrida, Paul de Man, and Richard Rorty)
• Orange County, California (such as on the history of planning and development, women in the public sphere, the LGBT community , and environmental issues)
• Southeast Asian Americans (particularly the refugee and immigrant experience)
• Dance and performing arts (including the papers of Robert Cohen, Donald MacKayle, and Eugene Loring)
• UC Irvine history
• The work of UCI’s Nobel Laureates (Frederick Reines and F. Sherwood Rowland)

For more information about the award and the criteria, please see http://special.lib.uci.edu/services/award.html.  UC Irvine undergraduate and graduate students of any level are encouraged to apply.  We especially encourage undergraduates who are involved in the first-year integrated program or who are writing an honors thesis to participate.

This is a great time to investigate potential paper topics in Special Collections and Archives, and we are eager to help you plan your archival research projects. Email us at spcoll@uci.edu, visit our website, or visit our Reading Room in the Langson Library, Room 525.

Our dance and drama archival materials, as well as books, have always been among our strongest collections, and consequently we have very good collections related to costume and fashion design.  Costume designers, as well as fashion historians, have used these collections for a variety of research and classroom teaching projects. As an example, Special Collections and Archives houses the unique collection Fashion Frocks, Inc. Style Cards and Other Material (MS-P054). Fashion Frocks, Inc. was a dress manufacturing company located in Cincinnati, Ohio from 1908 to the 1970s. The company also made style cards for salespeople to use in marketing their dresses.  This collection comprises 124 style cards, each approximately 23 x 30.5 cm. Each style card features a different fashion style from the 1952 Fashion Frocks spring collection and most include fabric swatches. The verso of each card contains information about colors, sizes, price, and an effusive marketing pitch for the dress design on that card. Also included in the collection is a letter from the company to Fashion Frocks, Inc. representatives, a delivery schedule, and a broadside detailing bonus gifts for sales representatives with large orders. These cards provide insight as to what motivated women to purchase particular dresses, and the swatches, which are in fine condition, provide unique examples of the types of material that were being used for popular dresses in the mid-twentieth century.

Lynn Mally (UCI Professor Emerita, History) has used this collection extensively and she has posted to her blog “American Age Fashion” two very interesting pieces about this collection and about the Fashion Frock style cards.
http://americanagefashion.com/?p=190
http://americanagefashion.com/?p=3194

This collection is open and available to researchers in our Reading Room on the 5th floor of Langson Library. For additional information, contact us at (949) 824-3947 or spcoll@uci.edu.

ECCO at March on Hollywood, ca. 1990

The history of LGBT communities in Orange County, California, is an important and ever-growing collection focus here at UCI Special Collections and Archives. Last year we featured materials from our LGBT archival collections in our “LGBT Communities in Orange County: Highlights from the Archival Collections” exhibit in Langson Library, and hosted a reception with honored guests who donated their historical documents, photos, and ephemera to the archives.

One of the newest collections donated to our LGBT archives contains the records of the Elections Committee of the County of Orange (ECCO, also known as ECCOPAC). ECCO is a political action committee run completely by volunteers that promotes LGBT rights in Orange County. Established in 1982, it is one of the oldest LGBT PACs in California. This collection includes materials from ECCO’s annual awards dinner, including posters and programs. The 180+ Reporter newsletter and additional ECCO newsletters and reports from 1998-2005 are included, as well as photographs, campaign posters, banners, stickers, and t-shirts.

See the finding aid for the collection on the Online Archive of California here.

2009 ECCO Awards Dinner program

2000 ECCO Awards Dinner program

1992 ECCO Awards Dinner program

1985 ECCO Awards Dinner program

For more information about supporting the efforts of preserving LGBT history, please see our brochure Documenting the LGBT Communities in Orange County.

Below are minimally processed archival collections from the Southeast Asian Archive collections that have recently been made available for researchers. These collections are available to researchers in the Special Collections and Archives Reading Room on the fifth floor of Langson Library. For additional information please contact the Special Collections and Archives staff at spcoll@uci.edu or (949) 824-3947.

MS-SEA018, Wayne Wright Collection
http://www.oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/kt1f59r6gs
This collection is primarily comprised of Cambodian newspapers and magazines, and printed material documenting Cambodian-American student education. The collection also contains Wayne Wright’s Master of Arts thesis.  Extent 1.0 linear feet.

MS-SEA030, Hach Yasumura Collection
http://www.oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/kt6f59s387
This collection contains materials collected by Hach Yasumura in Sacramento, California on Southeast Asian issues between 1975-2002. There are newsletters, correspondence of refugee agencies, and reports on Mutual Assistance Associations (MAAs) in California. Books and magazines on Vietnamese, Laos, Cambodian, Hmong, and Mien cultures are also contained in the collection. Extent 5.0 linear feet.

MS-SEA034, John Scire Photographs
http://www.oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/kt1m3nf3bb
This collection contains photographs taken of Vietnamese and Cambodian refugees and their living areas at Camp Pendleton, California in 1975. The photographs also document childrens’ activities at the military base.  Extent 0.2 linear feet (1 box).

MS-SEA037, Sucheng Chan Interviews and Clippings
http://www.oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/kt496nf42n
This collection consists of 82 audio tapes (71 mini-cassettes and 11 cassettes) containing interviews with Cambodian-Americans, conducted by Audrey U. Kim in 1995 and 1996 for the book Not Just Victims: Conversations with Cambodian Community Leaders in the United States published by the University of Illinois in 2003. Also included are approximately 170 newspaper clippings indexed by Sucheng Chan covering 1978-1980, regarding events in Vietnam and Cambodia as well the experiences of refugees from those countries.  Extent 1.2 linear feet (3 boxes).

MS-SEA039, John Jung Collection on Indochinese Refugee Resettlement Program
http://www.oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/kt4p30382w
This collection comprises materials collected by California State University, Long Beach Psychology Professor Emeritus John Jung that document Indochinese refugee resettlement efforts during the mid to late 1970s in California and includes minutes, agendas, handbooks, factsheets, correspondence, newsletters, directories, reports, and anthropological survey materials from the US government and other organizations that were supporting refugee settlement in Southern California. Extent 0.4 Linear feet (1 box).

MS-SEA043, Khmer Arts Records
http://www.oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/c8h130q2
Khmer Arts is a nonprofit organization focusing on classical Cambodian dance based in Long Beach, California and Takhmao, Cambodia. This collection consists of 93 videorecordings of Khmer Arts Ensemble rehearsals and performances on digital video (DV) tape and DVD.

Below are minimally processed archival collections from the Critical Theory Archive that have recently been made available for researchers. These collections are available to researchers in the Special Collections and Archives Reading Room on the fifth floor of Langson Library. For additional information please contact the Special Collections and Archives staff at spcoll@uci.edu or (949) 824-3947.

MS-C009, Eugenio Donato Papers
http://www.oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/kt838nf5vz
This collection contains manuscripts, teaching materials, and subject files of former University of California, Irvine French and Comparative Literature professor, Eugenio Donato. Extent 4.0 linear feet (4 boxes).

MS-C013, J. Hillis Miller Papers
http://www.oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/kt1z09r9q4
This collection consists of professional and teaching papers of J. Hillis Miller, a literary critic and Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the University of California, Irvine. Included are his scholarly works, manuscripts, conference attendance and memberships in scholarly associations, and correspondence. This teaching papers consist of lecture notes, syllabi, student grades, and student correspondence.  Extent 54.0 linear feet (54 boxes)

MS-C015, Robert Weimann Papers
http://www.oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/kt738nf89t
This collection consists of published works by Robert Weimann, Shakespearean scholar and Professor Emeritus, Department of Drama, University of California, Irvine. The bulk of the collection consists of works by Weimann, comprising preprints, reprints, and offprints of journal articles, book chapters, and books. There is also the correspondence with Murray Krieger between 1988 and 1994. Extent 0.8 linear feet (2 boxes)

MS-C016, University of California, Irvine, Critical Theory Institute Manuscript Materials
http://www.oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/kt9x0nf6pd
This collection contains the University of California, Irvine’s Critical Theory Institute’s papers regarding its second book, “Culture” and the Problems of the Disciplines, published 1998. Included are memoranda, correspondence, drafts with holographic corrections, reader reports, author questionnaires, and galley proofs. Extent 0.8 linear feet.

MS-C018, Mark Poster Papers
http://www.oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/kt809ng0c3
This collection includes the print and electronic teaching and research papers Mark Poster, Professor of History and Film & Media Studies at the University of California, Irvine. Extent 3.2 Linear feet (4 boxes) and 1.03 GB of electronic records.

MS-C020, Renée Riese Hubert Publications and Papers
http://www.oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/kt3m3nf29z
This collection consists of publications by and other papers from Renée Riese Hubert, Professor Emerita of French and Comparative Literature at the University of California, Irvine. The collection includes artists’ books, publications about artists’ books, including art exhibition and artists’ catalogs, journals, books, and publishers’ catalogs, correspondence, and clippings. Materials are in English and French. Renée Riese Hubert (1916–2005) was Professor Emerita of French and Comparative Literature at the University of California, Irvine.  Extent 4.4 Linear feet (5 boxes).

ANNOUNCING THE ONLINE ARCHIVE OF UCI HISTORY:

Special Collections & Archives proudly announces the opening of a digital archive of the history of the University of California, Irvine campus.

The Online Archive of UCI History is a digital archive created by the University of California, Irvine Libraries to preserve and make available for research core historical records of the university. Included are audio and video recordings, films, photographs and slides, and publications from 1959 forward. Currently, the Online Archive features:

• 30 oral histories of prominent faculty and staff
• 29 videos and films including the stunning NBC production “Birth of a Campus” (1964) and the funky promotional video “Wot ZOT?” (1974)
• digitized and full-text searchable back issues of the New University from 1968-1993
• over 2100 photographs and slides documenting the campus through 1970 including the popular Early Campus Albums.

This digital archive was created to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the founding of UC Irvine, but will continue to grow in the coming months and years. The Online Archive of UCI History is a central resource for anyone interested in the history of our unique campus. The site is fully searchable and browse-able by title, date, creator, and subject. Each collection and subcollection includes a summary of its contents, which will help guide researchers who might enter the Online Archive by browsing or through a web search.

Materials for the Online Archive of UCI History were selected in coordination with the University of California, Irvine 50th Anniversary Planning Committee’s Historical Documentation Subcommittee, including chair Michelle Light, former Head of Special Collections, Archives and Digital Scholarship; Julia Lupton, English Professor; Bill Maurer, Research and Graduate Studies Associate Dean, School of Social Sciences; Keith Nelson, History Professor Emeritus; Spencer Olin, History Professor Emeritus; Craig Reem, Public Affairs and Communications Director, City of Irvine; and Zen Yieh, Marketing Account Executive, UC Irvine Extension.

This project would not be possible without the dedicated work of the following staff from the UCI Libraries: Michelle Light, former Head of Special Collections, Archives, and Digital Scholarship; Matthew McKinley, Digital Projects Specialist; Mark Vega, Programmer; Sylvia Irving, Graphic Designer; Shu Liu, Metadata and Digital Resources Librarian; Audra Eagle Yun, Acting Head of Special Collections and Archives; Alix Norton, Archives Assistant and Digitization Coordinator; Ron Matteson, Library Assistant; and multiple student assistants.

The majority of this piece is cross-posted to the California Digital Library blog. Co-written by Sherri Berger, Digital Special Collections Program Coordinator at CDL, and Michelle Light, Head of Special Collections, Archives, and Digital Scholarship at UC Irvine Libraries

The photography of Edward W. Cochems

People under pavilion at a bathing beach in Newport Beach, California, 1905. Photograph by Edward W. Cochems

UC Irvine holds what is probably the largest single existing collection of photographs by Edward W. Cochems, a self-taught photographer based in Santa Ana from 1915 until around 1945. The Edward W. Cochems Photographs comprises about 1,100 original glass plate negatives and an additional 100 prints. Many more images are scattered across a range of Southern California repositories and family albums (and it is likely that still others remain to be found).

Visitors to the Online Archive of California (OAC) and Calisphere can now explore more than 530 photographs of Southern California in the first part of the 20^th Century.

• view photos on Calisphere
• view finding aid with photos on the OAC

The photographs depict people at work and play, posed and candid, and streets, buildings, and vistas throughout Southern California, with a particular emphasis on Orange County. Together they tell a wonderful visual history of the area.

Chinese American family in their front yard in Artesia, California, undated. Photograph by Edward W. Cochems

A self-taught photographer

Cochems came into photography after a string of other careers, including an early stint on a railroad gang and a successful run as a clothing salesman. Sometime between 1911 and 1913 he suffered a nervous breakdown, due to, in his own words, “over ambition, strenuous and confining mental work.” Acting upon doctor’s orders for “rest, quiet, and country air,” he decided to take up photography as a hobby and purchased a camera advertised in a local newspaper. Cochems described his transformation into a professional photographer in this way:

Starting out with my camera, I resolved to take a few snapshots of the farm houses…Returning with my sample prints, I interviewed my farm house prospects and succeeded in selling 9 out of 12, each patron ordering a dozen postcards…The news was heralded throughout the village, “There’s a photographer in town.”*

He soon ventured into portraits—his first subject was his daughter Adeline—and commissioned works for a variety of purposes such as postcards and brochures. Fascinated by all of his surroundings, especially natural wonders, he continually snapped photos of as many scenes as he could develop.

A cross-institutional collaboration

We are excited to make available these historic photographs through the OAC and Calisphere, as they augment a selection of Cochems images already contributed to the websites by the Orange Public Library and the Santa Ana Public Library. This is an excellent example of how aggregated online access to special collections materials can provide users with more opportunities for discovery.

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*Cochems is quoted from an article he wrote in 1924 entitled “How I won my way back to health with photography,” a transcript of which is held by Special Collections and Archives.

Jumbo & Colt: The Printing World of Jane Grabhorn is the current exhibit in the Special Collections and Archives lobby on the fifth floor of Langson Library. The exhibit runs from January 7 – March 22, 2013.

Jane Bissell Grabhorn (1911-1973) was a printer and publisher of considerable importance in San Francisco, the center of the evolving fine printing community of the 1930s and 40s. She was the wife of Robert Grabhorn, who with his brother Edwin established the Grabhorn Press in San Francisco in 1920. The Grabhorn Press was the most important purveyor of fine printing in America during this era, and printed several of the most important fine press books of the 20th century.

Early in her printing career, Jane had watched the two Grabhorn brothers work together, often struggling as they would try to settle on the design of each book. To amuse herself she began to explore the possibility of printing her own projects. Robert discouraged her from buying a toy Jumbo press that Jane had seen in a store window, logically explaining that they had a shop full of presses if she wanted to use one. When in 1937 she finished her first project using the shop’s Washington hand press, she perversely titled her new undertaking the Jumbo Press. Jane’s new hobby became her obsession. Her Jumbo creations are not only irreverent, unique and incredibly original; they became, and remain, exceedingly rare collector’s items. 

In 1938, the Grabhorns took on William Matson Roth as a summer intern in the shop. He was a student at Yale and a member of the wealthy Matson steamship family. Roth was enamored of Jane’s wit, talent and creativity in her Jumbo Press pieces. He was also interested in contemporary literature. They soon agreed to a collaborative partnership and the Colt Press was established to publish mainly contemporary literature and western history in inexpensive but fine, beautiful editions. Colt Press books included such notable authors as Henry Miller, Paul Goodman, Edmund Wilson, Janet Lewis, Weldon Kees, J.V. Cunningham and Don Stanford. There were plans to publish F. Scott Fitzgerald, Saul Bellow and Philip Rahv, but those came to naught.  The press also designed and printed books for others, notably the Book Club of California.

Jane Grabhorn, at first only a supporting cast member in the amusing and eccentric world of the Grabhorn Press, went on to make her own unique contributions to the world of fine book making. She accomplished this with her fearless personality, her strong sense of humor, her appreciation of collaboration in the arts, her fine design sense and her notable editorial skills. This exhibit tells the story of her two presses: the Jumbo Press & the Colt Press.

The rare book collections in UCI’s Special Collections and Archives Department include significant holdings of Colt Press titles and some of the rare Jumbo Press items.  Only a sample of those holdings is included in this exhibit.

We welcome you to take the time to see this exhibit and to learn more about the printing world of Jane Grabhorn. For more information please contact us at spcoll@uci.edu, (949) 824-3947.

Special Collections & Archives hosted a graduate intern from San Jose State University’s School of Library and Information Science in Fall 2012. Chris compiled the following reflection on his experience, a longer version of which is also posted to his weekly intern blog Archivist Apprentice. Thanks and best of luck, Chris!

—

Meet the Intern

During the fall of 2012 I had the pleasure and privilege of working as an intern at UC Irvine Libraries Special Collections and Archives (SC&A). For a graduate MLIS student interested in being exposed to archival best practices in a professionally run environment, UCI’s SC&A easily fits the bill.

I am an Information Technology professional by trade, but I volunteer for a California desert historical society. After thirty years of making a living in business information around Orange County, I decided to pursue a second career in history information — otherwise known as an archivist.

As part of the MLIS educational experience students are encouraged to obtain practical experience by means of internship programs in working archives. I work and live in south Orange County in southern California. The UCI campus has been a recurring theme in my life although my higher education has been obtained primarily from Cal State institutions. Through my coursework I was familiar with Michelle Light’s publications and learned she was the Head of Special Collections, Archives, and Digital Scholarship at UCI. From her presentation at the 2011 Society of American Archivists conference I learned that the department she managed was at the forefront of archival practice. I introduced myself and she encouraged me to apply for an internship at SC&A.

The Internship Site

The UCI Libraries, Special Collections and Archives houses the UC Irvine Libraries’ collections of rare books, manuscripts, archives, photographs, and other rare and special materials. Students, researchers, and community members are encouraged to visit and use the collections and services available within the department’s reading room.

Back in the staff area of the Langson, one of two cubicle spaces is set aside for sharing by transient resources such as interns. It’s a nice space with a networked computer, a decent amount of flat work area, and a window view of the San Gabriel Mountains. Archivists’ Toolkit was the archival data management technology used along with a home-grown Stacks Locator for logging the locations of shelved collections. Other utilities such as JEdit and NetDrive used to upload EAD to OAC are covered in my Day 8.0 blog post.

Internship Reflections

Overall, my internship at the UCI SC&A was a personal success because I was able to accomplish the goals I set out for myself. Most of my MLIS coursework has previously revolved around archival theory. This internship was my opportunity to apply that theory in a practical setting in highly organized archives under professional guidance. At its core, my plan was to process manuscript collections from “soup to nuts,” and the wonderful archivists at UCI helped me do just that over the course of 138 hours of hands-on work on seven collections comprising 7.6 linear feet of processed material.

Sometimes, I think it was the small decisions, the ones that were neither intuitive nor spelled out in procedure manuals that were the most difficult aspects of the work experience. There are some things that are learned only by asking someone in the know and the archivists at UCI, especially my site supervisor Audra Eagle Yun, were generous with their time and knowledge.

From my internship I gained confidence with and practical knowledge of accessioning, rehousing, arranging, describing, preserving, shelving, creating finding aids, and generating and uploading EAD code to the Online Archive of California (OAC) for paper-based collections. In terms of more advance archival techniques I was able to apply minimal processing concepts, DACS standards, and Library of Congress subject headings. At UCI, I had the privilege of working with archivists who are serious about adhering to professional and internal standards. As Audra said to me, “our finding aids and the presentation of source materials are how our patrons judge the quality of our work. Let’s be consistent, accurate, and neat!”

If the success of my internship were to be quickly summed up in terms of processing output, then the answer would be the finding aids of the seven small collections posted at the Online Archive of California:

MS-R160, Committee of 4000 Records, 0.2 linear feet
http://www.oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/c8kp82qz

MS-R161, Orange County Commission on the Status of Women Records, 0.4 linear feet
http://www.oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/c8fx7b0n

MS-R162, Orange County Human Relations Commission Records, 1.2 linear feet
http://www.oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/c8qz2bjr

MS-R163, Collection of Clippings on the Development of Irvine, California and Orange County Local Agency Formation Commission, 0.6 linear feet
http://www.oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/c8m61kvs

MS-R164, Environmental Coalition of Orange County Records, 2.0 linear feet
http://www.oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/c82806xg

MS-R165, Fair Housing Council of Orange County Records, 1.4 linear feet
http://oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/c8b56k9p

MS-F037, Jerome Tobis papers, 1.8 linear feet
http://www.oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/c89g5nfq