Student Activism Collections in Library Special Collections

Archivists are entrusted with the responsibility to build collections that document the history of our communities. At UCLA, this has meant a long history of collecting not just the voices of administration in our University Archives, but also those of other campus communities, including students. We collect student activism materials(opens in a new tab) going back almost a century, and continue to engage in attempts to center the stories and voices of students, particularly those from historically marginalized communities. We do not feel that this work stands in conflict with our responsibility to preserve the history of the university. Instead, we want to ensure that we are preserving a fuller and more diverse view of the many voices that make up UCLA and its communities, beyond officially and legally required administrative records.

Our philosophy when collecting archival material is to do so with an ethics of care and an awareness of what the materials mean to the person or communities who created them. In Library Special Collections, we make every effort to steward collections as thoughtfully and respectfully as possible. To that end, we are actively collaborating with individual students and student groups, including organizers of recent campus protests, to collect materials that represent their efforts and activities.

We are sensitive to the fact that we must center the needs of students and the people we represent in the archives. We are also aware that documenting activist movements involves special considerations and approaches. Models such as Project STAND(opens in a new tab) that seek to preserve activist movements while protecting the identities of individuals associated with these movements provide a valuable framework for archivists. We recognize that there are many ethical considerations at play when collecting materials in moments of crisis and we are doing our best to take these into consideration.

If you have materials to contribute or questions about our collecting efforts, please reach out to Andrea Hoff.