More Information
How would you describe your role at UCLA Library?
I began my position with UCLA Library Special Collections (LSC) in 2018 as the LSC archivist, charged with the responsibility to facilitate discovery and access for both newly acquired and backlog archival collections through user-centered, access-driven and ethical approaches to holistic stewardship in alignment with the UCLA Library’s strategic directions and organizational values.
What do you wish people knew about the work you do to support discovery and access?
In addition to processing collections, I also provide instruction and outreach in support of discovery and access. I’ve been working within the UCLA Library Special Collections punk collective since its foundation in 2013 to deliver instruction to our students which involves selecting curriculum, inviting community speakers and developing assessments and activities focused on materials in the punk archive. Our students use the LSC Punk Archive to create their final zine projects, to interrogate gaps and silences within the archive and to shape our collection development. These student assessments were instrumental to the creation of the punk collective’s collecting priorities, which were informed by what our students want to see in the archive.
Teaching these courses with Associate Professor of Musicology Jessica Schwartz also led to the following collaborations: An Intergenerational Punkast with Tequila Mockingbird, FUPU, and Mirrored Fatality where I served as an interviewer and again for a Punk Across Generations Live Q&A with the punk collective, Mirrored Fatality and FUPU. Additionally, I’ve collaborated with Schwartz on two virtual events, "LSC Outreach, Outcasts, and Organizing in the Academy," which invited collaboration with other Southern California institutions collecting punk materials and a DIY zine workshop makerspace with the Los Angeles Public Library’s zine committee.
Why do you care about the work you do?
I care about our City of Angels and the preservation of its most marginalized histories. Processing collections created by communities historically left out of academic archives inspires my work. Bringing these community creators and collaborators into the archive for outreach events and instruction sessions makes these materials matter the most. For example, when the children of the workers who were on the front lines of the Justice for Janitors movement came to visit with their parents, it was the first time we had an intergenerational, multilingual, all-ages reading room, the first time many folks stepped foot into an archive, and the first time these families saw their lives, their histories, their struggles and imagined their futures in the archive. There’s something powerful about seeing yourself reflected within a history that you created.
How does your work benefit students, faculty and other researchers?
I built my archival career upon the principle that preserving the past inspires the creation of other worlds and progressive futures. I hope that by making archival collections discoverable and accessible to all communities that in turn, these users will "imagine otherwise" toward creating new knowledge, making new meaning and dreaming of social justice change within our communities, our cities and our cultures.
I recently completed processing the Mark Thompson papers, the first LGBTQ+ collection in my entire LSC career that I’ve ever worked on making discoverable and accessible. The papers are rooted in historical struggles for gay liberation and document gay life on the margins, gay lives fashioned in opposition to heteronormative culture and the survival of queer cultural all resistance to societal violence. The beauty of these records resides in their survival through the AIDS epidemic, their prideful transgressions and ultimately, their hope for our collective futures.
Is there anything you want students, faculty and researchers to know about the resources you steward?
We promise our creators, donors, students, faculty and researchers that we will engage in ethical and holistic stewardship for the life cycles of all of our collections. This aspiration means forever, we hope.
We serve these records up to our users within a public university that puts them first. Discovery and access are imperative without restrictions.
My processing work within LSC highlights the importance of ethical stewardship as it relates to access, discovery and accountability to our stakeholders.
Some of my favorite collections we steward are the Los Angeles Unified Board of Education records, the Wanda Coleman papers, the June L. Mazer Lesbian Archive at UCLA, the Miriam Matthews photograph collection, the Rudi Gernreich papers and the Golden State Mutual Life Insurance records.
While working at LSC I’ve been excited to discover and access the Japanese American Research Project records, the Rick Barton papers, the Anais Nin papers, the Rosalio Munoz papers, the Horace Tapscott papers, the East West Players records and the Eiko Ishioka papers.
