Since 2001, the CSRC Library has launched major preservation projects in music, cinema, and the visual arts. These projects have received over $1 million in grants from:

Center for Community Partnerships

Ford Foundation

Getty Foundation

John Randolph Haynes Foundation

Los Tigres del Norte Foundation

Museum of Fine Arts, Houton

National Association of Latino Arts and Culture

Rockefeller Foundation

UC MEXUS

Our goal is to preserve the rich and diverse history of the Chicano and Latino communities for future research, classroom instruction, and the public at large. We work closely with community groups to ensure that our projects not only safeguard the historical record (by archiving important documents) but also contribute to the more immediate needs of the community itself.

Current Projects

Chicano Cinema Recovery Project

The CSRC has launched a multi-year initiative in collaboration with the UCLA Film and Television Archive to identify, preserve, and make accessible the independent productions of Chicano and Latino filmmakers. The project is currently restoring six films and trailers by pioneer filmmaker Efraín Gutiérrez, followed by a national tour of these films and the publication of a scholarly anthology evaluating the filmmaker's career. This project features several other components that allow it to serve as a model for future efforts in this area: a pilot study to survey 8 mm home movie collections in Chicano-dominant communities, a new course on archival issues for Chicano-produced films, and an acquisitions program aimed at increasing Chicano archival holdings.

External Funding: Ford Foundation, $100,438; Rockefeller Foundation, $30,000; and UCMEXUS, $15,000.

Los Angeles Latino Art Survey

This is a project undertaken by the CSRC Library and Archive with support from the Getty Foundation. The goal was to survey documentary materials related to the development of Latino art organizations in Southern California dating back to the 1960s. The project consisted of interviewing personnel from various Latino art organizations in the Los Angeles area and individuals—many of them artists—who participated in arts organizations and artist collectives. The goal of the project was to collect not only the social and institutional history of the entities that supported, exhibited, and otherwise circulated Chicana/o and Latina/o art in this area but also the histories of the individual artists involved in these movements.

This project resulted in the identification of historical materials, including organizational records and artists’ personal papers, that needed to be archived for preservation. Among them were four collections that have been incorporated into the CSRC Archive:

The Mexican Cultural Institute of Los Angeles Archive [1984-2004]
The Plaza de la Raza Archive [1970-2000]
The Adobe L.A Collection [1992 – 2005]
The Nancy Tovar Murals of East L.A. Collection

The LGBT and Mujeres Initiatives

The CSRC was awarded a Ford Foundation grant in support of increasing its LGBT and women’s collections. This initiative has a fourfold mission: to educate women and LGBT communities about the importance of documenting and preserving Latina and Latino history; to educate Latina and Latino communities about the importance of women’s stories and LGBT history within their archival efforts; to provide women and LGBT Latinas and Latinos with archival materials that can function as a source of pride, inspiration, and new scholarship; and to educate “mainstream” archival institutions about the need for both women’s and LGBT archival holdings and for culturally sensitive collecting and archival practices. To do this, the CSRC will increase its collecting efforts in this area of study and develop a guide for community archiving that can be used as a model by other repositories and community organizations when working with underrepresented communities and their historical materials. The guide will be available in December 2009.

The Los Angeles Chicano and Latino Photograph Documentation Project

The CSRC was awarded a John Randolph Haynes and Dora Haynes Foundation grant to address the issue of preservation through the digitization of vulnerable image-based collections. To meet this challenge, the CSRC began digitizing two of its image-heavy collections: The Edward R. Roybal Photograph Collection and the Yolanda Retter-Vargas Collection of Orphan Photographs. The first collection documents Edward Roybal’s public service career from the 1940s to the 1990s as a Los Angeles city councilman and a U.S. congressman. The second was collected by the previous librarian, Yolanda Retter-Vargas, who found the photographs at various flea markets. This collection consists of “orphan” photographs—images with no provenance information. They appear to belong to six families. The primary goal of this project is to make the original photographs from each collection available to the public through an online archive hosted by the UCLA Digital Library.

Completed Projects

Frontera Collection Online Archive

The Frontera Collection Online Archive was launched on March 26, 2009. Media coverage of the press conference is available here and a documentary on the project is available here.

In October 2001, then CSRC Director Guillermo E. Hernandez initiated the digital preservation of the Arhoolie Foundation's Strachwitz Frontera Collection, the largest repository of Mexican and Mexican-American popular and vernacular recordings in existence. To preserve this unique heritage, the CSRC began digitizing the collection, consisting of 41,000 78-rpm phonograph recordings. The digital archive is hosted by the UCLA Music Library in partnership with the UCLA Digital Library Program.

External Funding: Los Tigres del Norte Fund, $200,000.

Chicano Studies Archival Program–Processing Project

This project responded to the fact that the CSRC's numerous special collections—housed in the Southern Regional Library Facility—had never been processed. The grant allowed the CSRC to establish an archival program, hire an archivist, process existing collections, and prepare grant proposals for the acquisition and processing of new collections. The CSRC established a pipeline of new collections in the following areas: Latino Los Angeles (all areas); and, nationally, in music, media, performing arts, and the visual arts.

External Funding: The Haynes Foundation, $28,750 (for 2003-04).

Serving the Community, Preserving Cultural Heritage

This project represents a community partnership with Self-Help Graphics and Art in East Los Angeles. Planned work included an inventory of Self-Help's on-site collections and development of a computer management system and archival internship program. Self-Help would also donate a representative suite of prints to the CSRC Library. In February 2004, the CSRC and Self-Help will co-host a Latino Arts Summit for L.A.-based Latino arts organizations in order to address preservation and access issues related to their archival holdings.

Campus Funding : Center for Community Partnerships, $39,384 (for 2003-04).

Visiones Archival Project

Visiones was a collaborative project with the CSRC, the National Association of Latino Arts and Culture (NALAC), and Hector Galan Productions. There were three components to the CSRC Visiones Archival Project: (1) the acquisition and processing of NALAC's document collection, (2) the acquisition of the Visiones documentary series archive, and (3) the solicitation of NALAC member organizations nationwide to participate in the Visiones archival project. NALAC's holdings document the organization's role in developing arts spaces and maintaining connections among established arts organizations. Galan's documentary collection is stored at the UCLA Film and Television Archive. This raw footage includes hundreds of hours of interviews with Latino writers, musicians, arts scholars and artists.

External Funding: NALAC, $9,200

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