Champions of history

This years winners of LA As Subject Forum's La Senora award for their original website on the Los Angeles Aqueduct, Kyla Resnick and Andrea Marroquin recently took second place at the State Championships for the same work. 


Here's the story in the Signal:

Champions of history

The LA As Subject Forum, 1993-1997

A brief sketch for a history of the LA As Subject Forum

Some might say the professionalization of American historical archives may have taken root with Schellenberg’s 1956 National Archives Bulletin No. 8 directive, “The Appraisal of Modern Public Record”.   This beginning to codify standards and practices for American archivists and with new funding in sociology and social history a preservation of an American record was underway. Unfettered from the dominion of rich and royal, the late start would be a blessing to allow a new generation of archivists an indulgence collecting life from the bottom up.

An early testing ground was the creation of an urban archive in Detroit to preserve the record of a labor movement then endangered by high-cost floor space for document storage in booming downtown Detroit. Over the years as the Walter Reuther Archives program developed at Wayne State University it became not only an institutional resource but a teaching program as well.

One Reuther archivist, Robert Marshall, moved west to Los Angeles where the History Department at CSUN had long encouraged student research including the establishment of an Urban Archives Center at the Oviatt Library. While entering data for a subject guide to the many dozens of holdings in this university social research collection, Marshall, the chief archivist and student crew saw a pattern emerging. These diverse holdings ranging from the Rudolfo Acuna Collection to the Rockwell Santa Susana Field Reports were also all about Los Angeles. LA was fast becoming an oft-repeated entry into the local finding guide.

Next Marshall moved the archivists to document any other institutions that may relate to current collections work. That initiative would cause the Marshall to join Karen Stokes at the Getty Research Institute.  That colloboration initiated a study survey in 1995 Getty Research Institute agreed to fund L.A. as Subject: The Transformative Culture of Los Angeles Communities.

LA as Subject initiated collaborative partnerships with local universities, cultural institutions, and communities to contribute to identification and coordination of less visible archives and collections about the Los Angeles region.

The initiative would develop new resource tools that could make the material culture of little known archives and collections more accessible to scholars, researchers, and community historians producing academic, artistic and community work on Los Angeles and public and invitational forums through panels, lectures, and symposia to would examine historical and contemporary topics on Los Angeles.

One enduring resource would come in 1997 with the convening at the Getty Research Institute of the LA as Subject Advisory Forum to support the work of the four-year research project, L.A. as Subject (1995–1999).

Marroquin and Resnick take the first "La Senora"!

The archivist presented the LA As Subject Forum’s first La Senora Award for best project using local archives. The prize went to Andrea Marroquin and Kyla Resnick for their website The Innovative Los Angeles Aqueduct.

Religious women at LMU!

Kevin Brown ('09) recently mined the LMU Archives for images of our religious women.