University Library E-News

Featured: Learning from the Words of War

The latest exhibit from Special Collections & Archives, Words of War: Personal Experiences of Conflict, draws the visitor into perspectives of the willing and unwilling participants in conflict through personal correspondence, official forms, newsletters, propaganda, notices, log books and other ephemera.

Featured: The AmaZine World of Underground Publishing

Back on campus, creativity is thriving in hands-on, unexpected ways. At the CSUN University Library, zines have become a space where students, staff, and community members come together to share ideas, tell stories, and explore issues that matter to them. Zines—short for “magazines” or “fanzines”—are self-published, small-run works that have long been a way for people to share ideas outside of mainstream publishing. They’re often handmade using whatever tools are available, like paper, scissors, glue, and photocopiers, and passed around through informal networks, events, and community spaces.

NEH Grant Supports Expanding Research in California Politics

Our Special Collections & Archives librarians were gratified to learn this past July that their project, “American Government Traditions: Federal, State, and Local Intersections in Post-War Los Angeles,” had been awarded $284,235 in grant funding from the National Endowment of the Humanities (NEH).

CSUN’s Special Collections & Archives is no stranger to NEH-funded projects, but the NEH itself has been in the news for having cancelled $100 million in previously awarded grants on ideological grounds, later reinstated under a judge’s order. Head Archivist and grant Project Director Ellen Jarosz remarks, “NEH grants are always competitive, and have felt even more so in recent years. We were hopeful, if not optimistic, that the grant would be awarded. Finding out NEH had chosen to fund the proposal was a wonderful surprise.”