In Spring 2024 Special Collections & Archives ran a pilot project to test workflows that rely on the expertise of CSUN students and librarians working collaboratively to remediate metadata in our finding aids and digital collections. The project was shaped by the CSUN University Library's Reparative Description Task Force Report's recommendations to....
Crenshaw Boulevard is recognized as the commercial and cultural spine of Black Los Angeles. In recent years, however, surrounding neighborhoods in central Crenshaw have undergone dramatic change as “revitalization” projects promising opportunities for economic growth have threatened the historical and cultural character of this community...
The City of Los Angeles holds thousands of murals sometimes called Street Art. There is a long history of mural painting in California with the Mission San Miguel built in 1821 holding a wall fresco mural. Special Collections & Archives holds many resources that highlight mural paintings in the Los Angeles Area...
In 1921, William Mills Wrigley, Jr., the Wrigley Company founder of chewing gum and candy fame, became majority owner of Major League Baseball’s Chicago Cubs. That same year, a time when Major League Baseball had no teams west of St. Louis, Wrigley purchased the Pacific Coast League’s Los Angeles Angels, then a minor-league team. In 1925...
Last week, California Governor Gavin Newsom issued a posthumous pardon for former CSUN student activist and faculty member Bill Burwell. Special Collections & Archives has several original and primary sources that document Burwell's work and contributions on campus in its University Archives & Campus History collecting area. While some have been shared....
If it were not for the photographic collection at the Tom & Ethel Bradley Center, evidence of Los Angeles’s support for the modern civil rights movement in the South may have quietly slipped into the past. The African American photographic collection in the Bradley Center documents this era in the works of three photographers: Charles Williams, Harry Adams, and Guy Crowder...
Point Lobos is just north of Big Sur and just south of Carmel-By-The-Sea, situated on the central coast of California in Monterey County. Filled with Monterey Cypress trees, vast kelp forests, and a diverse range of birds and animals, the area is awe inspiring for many artists. Special Collections & Archives holds two extraordinary books....
Recently the Homer Halverson Collection expanded with the addition of some materials donated by his children. The collection holds a treasure trove of local history including documentation of the development of Los Angeles's water infrastructure, the Halversons' donation of land to the City of Los Angeles that would eventually become the CSUN campus, construction of multiple freeways around Los Angeles, and the Halverson Family's move from Oklahoma to California in 1924.https://library.csun.edu/SCA
The Urban Archives, part of Special Collections & Archives, collects materials that document the history of Los Angeles, and includes the records of many labor unions, guilds, and affiliated labor organizations that have operated within Los Angeles since the early 20th century. Many of these collections include records documenting labor strikes, or work stoppages ....
In 1887, after Reconstruction, a black man named Robert Creecy purchased a parcel of Canebrake Plantation land in Louisiana from Florestan Waggenspauch. Creecy sold half the parcel to another buyer, while retaining ownership of the remaining land. In 1898, Creecy's son-in-law, a 25-year-old black man with indigenous ancestry named Robert Celestin, purchased the half parcel of land back...
