 Well, hello welcome my name is Athena Jackson. I am the director of library special collections and I'm very glad to be your emcee today. I want to open this event by recognizing that as a public and land grant institution, it is important to acknowledge that our campus resides on the homeland. I'm the Gabrielino Tongva people, the traditional land caretakers of where many of us are situated today, even at home. Welcome to the library special collections and the Charles young research library on zoom. Thank you so much for being here today. I know a lot of you have been library supporters and your investment in our goals continues to make a positive impact on how we're able to do our work effectively and creatively every day. The library special collections as part of the library that supports research and engagement with our rarest and most unique materials through the collections we build and the connections we foster with many communities. From rare manuscripts and books to emails of prominent figures in our collections, we provide a wide array of research opportunities supporting the entirety of the academic disciplines across UCLA. Now that's a lot of scope. So we count on our expert curatorial teams and their connections with peers and faculty to make collecting collecting dishes decisions daily. And we work from strategically designed collection development priorities that we update regularly to ensure our holdings and our goals match well to the ever evolving research and learning enterprise here at UCLA. Another area that I'm especially excited about is our university archives. The archives are so connected to the achievements, the challenges and the experiences of the UCLA. They tie our students to our alumni, our faculty to their predecessors, and our community partners to our endeavors. In fact, I imagine any of many of you in here today are either alumni or UCLA enthusiasts like me. So I know I'm in good company when I say that collecting our institutional memory is critical and to telling the whole story of our place to LA and our history of our global impact to the world. So it is my pleasure to introduce you to Heather Briston, our university archivist and our head of curators and collections for library special collections. Heather brings an enthusiasm to her role and breadth of knowledge that you will sense immediately. So without further ado, take it away Heather and go Bruins. Thank you, Athena for that lovely introduction. Well, this afternoon, I hope I can show all of you, especially some of you who have lots of history with UCLA, some things that are new to you, and most of all, peak your curiosity to explore and learn more. So one thing that you may have heard from Athena is is about our larger history and how we tell the story. So university archives is a part of the UCLA library special collections, which of course is part of the UCLA library. Together we endeavor to preserve and make available the unique rare and important materials in a whole host of formats and ranging from the ancient to actually earlier today I preserved an email that I received from the executive vice chancellor message earlier today so we are archiving even during the pandemic. Now, if you were if we were in the young research library, this is where I would be meeting all of you. And it's here where we bring the elements of the past into awareness for the present inquiry and research by our campus community and our local and regional communities. We focus on undergraduate and graduate learning and research as part of the vital role of the library in student and faculty success. But most of all, we are grounded in our public mission. We are open to inquiring minds from across the globe, even in this very disparate setting we currently find ourselves in. Today, I'm going to take us on a bit of a trip, looking at this university through three lenses. First, the sphere of the campus and the administration. Secondly, the sphere of the faculty and the staff. And finally, the reason why we're all here. The students and the alumni. First off, most of you probably know that UCLA wasn't always in Westwood. We had a sort of a paramedic journey across downtown LA, finally finding ourselves in Westwood in 1929. We have a history of always outgrowing our ourselves and our locations. So in 1924, the regents appointed a committee that when you think about it, did a fairly quick turnaround. In 1925, they had fielded over 100 proposed locations and narrowed it down to a small number of potentials. I have a collection in the archives that documents all of this. And there are literally many of stories that I'm sure you've all heard about the, the most famous story which I like to call the Goldilocks and the three bears of UCLA, which is the, the Pasadena location was too hot, and the possible role blaze location was too cold, and Westwood was just right. So how many of you know what I'm showing you here that one of the opportunities that we let go was the opportunity to be UC Chino Hills. I hope I have a few people out there who are listening to this from Chino Hills and, and I want you all to try at your home the eight clap. Instead of UC, UCLA, it'd have to be UC Chino Hills so you'd have to do it really fast but yes, believe it or not. That's where we might have been. Another aspect about our campus and about the administration of our campus that you might not know is that the university archives is known as the home for the official records of the university. And I have to tell you that it doesn't get much more official than the Chancellor's records. I can pretty much rely on the fact that if I'm looking for an answer for a question at some point the question has gone across the Chancellor's desk. And so one day I was looking I was looking for something else I was doing research on a different question, and I was looking in the Chancellor files for December 1959. So, so well over 60 years ago. And one of the things that I found it was one of those marvelous opportunities that every archivist loves to have, where we find the thing that nobody knew we had, and that happened to be an original Ralph bunch letter which you can see reproduced on the left hand side of your screen. And he wrote to us as you can see as part of his work in the United Nations and he was writing to Chancellor Knudsen at the time and congratulating us on our vision and leadership in establishing one of the earliest African studies centers, and which actually soon after its establishment went on to receive some of the prestigious federal recognition as an exemplar in the nation for African studies and so that was that was a very exciting day for me. And frankly it's a very exciting day for the university to have a letter like that. Now, I'm sure that many of you know the storied history of our university, and its connections to Hollywood and the entertainment industry. I mean, some of our faculty have been involved our students, they film on our campus. It's, it's a part of our lifeblood. Bob Hope MC'd homecoming once. Elizabeth Taylor crowned the homecoming King and Queen. So we've had it all. And many of you might be like me, and enjoy films and be a bit of a film buff. And so you also know that the director Alfred Hitchcock had a penchant for having cameos in all of his films. And that is the same for the university archives. Here you can see Alfred Hitchcock in a first anniversary photograph of the very well known and internationally renowned Jules Stein I Institute in 1967. And here we have Mr. Hitchcock, and I'll have you note he appears in only one photograph in this series and in this collection. And standing there with him is the founding director dot Dr. Stratzma, along with Jules Stein himself. Another hugely important area for our for UCLA is of course our faculty and our staff. Our faculty and users love the library. We collaborate with our faculty on supporting new areas of teaching and research, all of the time. And as their, as their curiosity grows. So does our work with them. And, and as a testament to that, we have here Richard see Rudolph. He's the first professor of Chinese and Asian studies in which opened in 1947. And so he started that program in 1947. And in October of 1948 through June of 1949, he spent a full bright traveling throughout China. In his case, buying books to send to the library to build a collection so that he would he and his students would have Chinese materials to teach and do research from. However, for those of you who know your dates and your history, you know that during that time, he was keeping one step ahead of the fighting between the Communist and the National Party armies in China. During this time, he purchased over 10,000 books, all of which he sent back to Westwood and all of which arrived safely. One of the things that I talk about with students and that I talk about when I am working with faculty in helping them understand how they can use university archives in their teaching. One of the things I like to highlight is my vision for university archives, which is everyone should be able to see themselves in the archives, whether that is a representation literally of themselves in a yearbook, or other materials. It's something that we that people can see that they can aspire to one of the areas that we have focused some of our collecting on in the past has been women in science. And one of the collections that we have is from the is from Professor Nina buyers in 1961. She was the first and only female physics professor at UCLA. And she was the only physics for female professor physics professor here for over 20 years. And during that time, she also concurrently held a position as the only female physics lecturer at Oxford. Her experience as a female physicist was central to her commitment to increase the representation of women in the sciences, particularly physics. And what I have brought for us today is actually from her collection. And, and it's, it's, it's fascinating to look at because this is actually and think about this. This is from a job offer that she got at Washington, before she was offered the job at UCLA, and at the University of Washington at that time, they had a loyalty oath, and Professor Nina buyers you can't you probably can't read this as well. But she took a stand, and she refused to take their loyalty oath, and she turned down a position. So think about that, a woman in physics, turning down a tenured faculty position in order to take a stand for civil live for civil liberties. It's, it's, it's a very inspirational collection to see. Another thing that we do quite a lot in library special collections is working with our faculty in encouraging them to teach with our breadth of materials that you heard my director Athena talking about. And part of this is to help everyone develop the skills of critical review and synthesis of information. And we use these examples in all sorts of teaching, teaching sessions. The whole point is to not only bring the material and the people who created them alive, but also model for students and have them model what active learning looks like. One of the collections that is my favorite to bring out for classes and this is whether it's a science class or not is the collection of Professor Paul Boyer, who received the 1997 Nobel Prize in chemistry. He's also the founding director of the Molecular Biology Institute. And what you what you might be able to see but probably aren't able to read on this is the heavy annotating that he did of all of the articles that he would get copies of from the library. And what is interesting about this is that sometimes and we've all done this where we make notes about things that are important, but he literally would interrogate an article. And to be able to show this to students to see his notes about possibly check this, this is an interesting point. And then he writes these little notes like, can this do this, does this make sense, and he makes all of these points and then I'm able to show him writing correspondence to the author of the articles, asking them these questions and in some cases these become folders full of correspondence between scientists and researchers and not just well known people but early career researchers and people from different disciplines other than his own. He graciously consumed his research, and I love to be able to show that to students as an example of something that we can all do our students and alumni. And our students that, and most especially our students is the reason why we're all here. And our goal is to hope that they all become alumni. And this is my also my opportunity to help you all see that while we are very serious about our educational endeavors and the research and the teaching and the forming of citizens that we can do here at UCLA. We also know how to have fun. And one of those ways that we have had fun for decades is through card stunts. Now unfortunately we do not do card stunts the way we used to do them, but you can see here, and I'm hoping maybe in all of you who are listening to this I might have had some former UCLA rally committee members. If so, I'm so happy to have you on this seminar, because this is by far. It's often talked of as one of our favorite collections, because this is literally how the rally committee would put together those absolutely various card stunts that you would see at the old Coliseum, or at the Rose Bowl on in the photograph, you can see the rally committee from 1958 hard at work. And while I can't guarantee you this is the stunts that they were working on. This is one of the card stunts from 1958. You can see how elaborate it is, how many cards they had to create and stamp and double check just for one stunt, but that actually happens to be one of our signature stunts. The UCLA in script, which happened throughout in in every single one of our card stunts. I also hope that our alumni's on the our alumna on the call are proud of the fact that in this world of card stunts, we are innovators, we started doing them in 1923. We came to Westwood. We were the first school to do light stunts in 1935. And that's that's where you either had a, you usually had a transparent card that was a different color that you showed a flashlight through. And then later on we got really fancy and we had multiple colors on one sheet that you could shine your flashlight through. And that was in 1935 that we did that. And then later on in the 40s, we got really fancy with animated and 3D stunts here at UCLA. Another thing that is hugely important in the life of our students and I'm glad to let you all know is still occurring today as we are not all able to be on campus is the huge important role that student groups have in creating community for our students. However, that does propose a bit of a challenge for me as the university archivist because there's one of me, and we have over 1000 registered student groups so I am sorely outnumbered in my work. However, one of the groups that I've been able to work with very closely is Samahong Pilipino. That is the Philippine American student group that was formed in 1972. I'm proud to say that this, these groups of students every year have a deep appreciation for their history and their archives. They come and look at it every year. And so this year we're going to try and find a way that we can do this for them virtually, they and their alumni take their role in part of the UCLA's history very seriously. And this actually on the screen here you can see their recognition from their 25th anniversary of their founding. And I also have in the archives recognition from the city of Los Angeles for the 45th anniversary of their founding. One of the things that is the most important for me as an archivist is the deep knowledge that I have that archives while they have the power to teach. They also have the power to move. And this is a story of the things that you find when you're looking for something else. I was working on a completely different project. It wasn't even related to the university archives. And I was reviewing materials in one of the collections that we hold, which is, which come from the Manzanar war relocation authority records. And I was flipping through the records very quickly, as you do when they're in a folder. And this caught my eye. This phrase here UCLA 1941. I knew what was in the folder was was correspondence from individuals who were at that time incarcerated in in Manzanar. It was related to an event that had happened at the camp where there was a fight between different groups that were there at that were there and incarcerated. And it was, it's the most moving and eloquent advocacy for the Japanese American position at that time. And it is as you would expect from a recent graduate of UCLA. If you the day of the letter was written in 1942. So that letter was written less than just a little bit over a year from when he had graduated from UCLA. And one of the one of the letters that are one of the sentences in the letter, I think about again and again, and he says this he says, again, referring to your statement, I must point out that the casualties were Americans. Most of the injured were Americans. He was very adamant when arguing with the administration of the camp to remind them that they were incarcerating fellow Americans. And when I read that letter. The first thing I wanted to do was was find him. So I found him in our yearbook and you can see a picture of him here he was a visit he graduated with a bachelor's degree in physics. He was from Los Angeles. And, and to be quite honest, it's, I don't know whether I'll ever be able to do that do it but I would love to find one of his family members if he had any family members because I would love to share a copy of this letter, so that they could see something that their relative wrote at such a harrowing and trying time, but yet he wrote with the full dignity and certainty of his right as an American to speak up for himself, and everyone else who was there. Now, if my little talk today has wet your appetite for finding out more about UCLA and maybe finding more stories that you didn't know about. I'm encouraging you all to go to the UCLA digital library, which has not only all sorts of materials related to the UCLA the university, but it has several other collections that are digitized for materials and special collections. And then if, if you really enjoyed the photographs of campus and people on campus, or if you're just kind of missing campus and you need that little UCLA fix. I really encourage you to go to one of our newest websites, picturing UCLA, which has over 10,000 photographs from the university archives of photographs related to UCLA, its people, and its events. Hopefully, hopefully, in 2021, we will have two exhibits on campus that hopefully will be able to come and look at and see that will include materials from university archives. And I just like to close by saying that it's important to remember that we are all worthy of telling our stories and having them heard. The most important thing that I can do as an archivist is to make sure that in one way or another, we can all see ourselves in the archives, and recognize that you are a part of something larger than yourself. Thank you. My goodness, Heather, I know that you don't hear the resounding applause that's taking place right now, all over the place I can't imagine where everybody's sitting but they're all cheering. Talk about a UCLA fix you gave us a mainline, and I think we're really, really invigorated by what you said, and the way that this whole UCLA ecosystem is so important both emotionally and intellectually and an identity. I appreciate what you said and I'm just so happy that you were able to share the story with us. I would like to invite everyone to click on the little button that says Q&A if you have a question, and I will be your surrogate speaker and I will do my best to ask your question and make sure that we plainly get an answer for you. I'm going to tell you right now that I can see some questions popping up that Heather they're about to test your trivia here. The beautiful thing about what Heather can do though is that she is first and foremost a librarian and you can contact her and she can follow up on your question and get you some of that data that you need if it's a quantity or a number that you need to ask. I'm going to start with a couple. I haven't memorized the whole 101 years of UCLA history. You really should, Heather. So a couple of things I just, there were some comments I just wanted to share with you that someone said that besides UC Chino Hills, that maybe it would have been someone saw Burbank, the Burbank website said that UCLA Wendy, Wendy Lay said that the Burbank website. So, you know, we'd have to clap UC Burbank. It's again, it's, you know, it's not going to have the same rhythm. It doesn't quite have the same rhythm but yes, no, you are absolutely right. There, the, the plans for Burbank, there were, there were over 100 proposals and and some of them, some of them have these big, elaborate maps about come and put the university here. And, but yes, it's, it's a fascinating collection. And I look forward to anybody who wants to come by and see it. Wonderful, we can get it out. Yes, when we finally can come to help and helpfully and safely. Also Wendy shared with us that that there is UCLA also has a loyalty. Oh yes, it did, it did, but it ended its loyalty oath for years before Nina buyers was applying at the University of Washington so UCLA had ended its loyalty oath requirement. Well before Washington and and now one thing I have not inquired about is I have not inquired of the University of Washington archivist as to when they did finally end their loyalty oath but I tell you they missed out on a fantastic physicist, but it's it's quite inspiring to read her letter about like no, I cannot take this job. I should, I should correct myself I'm learning in real time I feel like I'm live on TV here. That Wendy is our student in the library and is brilliant but she's passing on the brilliance of a visitor named Laureen Lazarovici who asked the first who mentioned the first question about Burbank Burbank and Ava Khan who talked about the oath so I'm sorry about that. So, so let's go to our first question this is a trivia here. What movies would you guess have been filmed at UCLA. Numbers, I could not say, but I know that at least gosh in the in the nine years that I've worked here. There's there's probably been seven or eight, and I have to admit I'm a bit of a geek when it comes to television programs and movies that include UCLA I have to watch them. They're really bad. I have to watch them, because I have to sort of like check like, Oh, yes, that's UCLA that is not Rome, you are not in Rome, you are running through the back of Royce. So, so I don't have a list on that but you know that's, that's a good one so I couldn't say, well best cut like, cut like you should feel free to email Heather and ask her to check on that counter. I can check on that number. I can check on that. I have to ask how are the card stunts done as of late because of prior to coven before coven happened how are the card stunts done now, or in a previous now. Yeah, the previous to now so in talking with some of our more recent graduates and our recent students, the, the, the card stunts have most cases gone away, unfortunately, and and when they were there they were much smaller I mean at one point we were getting the Guinness Book of World Records for the largest card stunts if you look at the, the diagram that I had up it was, it was about 35 people lost and 45 rows up. So they were, they were enormous and and and one of the things that I have I have a lot of photographs, along with those and you can see basically what if it was the daytime, people would sit, sort of like right in front of their face and the one thing that you could not go anywhere during halftime because these occurred during halftime so you were not going to the concession to get a hot dog or anything so you were holding these cards and it was a synchronized thing there was somebody on there was the talking on the field who were yelling out and you would flip the cards and you were holding them right here and it was, it was a wonder I, it was an absolute. So analog then right it still feels like it was completely it was completely analog except when we got really fancy with the flashlights. Now we're getting a little more technologically advanced. Yes, in the 30s, but the marvelous thing is is that we have lots of film footage of these both daytime stunts and nighttime stunts so even though we don't do them very much anymore and and we haven't done them with such verve in quite a while. Most many of them have been documented over the years in color. The night stunts are the night stunts are a little bit hard to see in film, but you can if the if the picture is clear enough, you can you can see it and they really are gorgeous. Well Heather from 1969 to 1973 one of our one of our visitors today named Catherine Cleary said she participated in the card stunts and it was a really fun and it's she's probably very excited that you're mentioning it and so we have a veteran stunter in the room. Just so you know, and oh that's great. I put my glasses on so I could read names better. Catherine also has a question, and I think it kind of comes together with Albert Alberto Perez's question which asked, he asks, is there a private collection at UCLA and also, how are decisions made about what is included in the archives and I wondered if you could tease out and answer the both of those the fact that we're like accessible and open, and also how you make decisions. Yes. Oh, absolutely. So the for for the university archive so I'm going to start first by talking about the university archives and then I will broaden it out to a broader picture in the university archives what what goes into university archives is first those records that have been deemed by the UC so the system wide records retention schedule that's what the entire UC system has decided are going to be the official records of the system and that's how you know I get things like the chancellor's records and how there are certain things like the the final annual budget and so sometimes those are not the most exciting records you've ever heard of, but but it but the information in them the story the story is exciting, even if they don't look that exciting. When it comes to materials that come from student groups or other groups, those are those while those aren't considered official records, they are part of the university's history and in the, in the, I don't know, the edict that comes down from the office of the president so that so that here's that here's a fun fact that I didn't mention the university archivist position there's one on every UC campus and the authority is the the office of the president delegates authority to the chancellor who dedicated delegates authority to the university librarian to hire someone to run the university archive so so so that so so when I get into that position part of that delegation of authority along with the official records of the university is this sort of more amorphous thing that talks about documenting the history, the people activities and decisions of the university and so that's where the student group materials come in. But in those cases, those student groups are are not. They, they are, I guess, more like private individuals than say like, so, so if you're the Dean of humanities, your records, your official records that are permanent have to come to the university archives. And if you're the current president of some a hung Filipino, you do not have to give me your records, I have to persuade you and work with you and show you how this might benefit both you and the history of the university to document that larger. That larger history so I sort of collect in two different areas from the people who have to give me things and the people who I have to cultivate and encourage them to give me materials and then so as far as like what is accessible. In the records retention schedule, there are certain records that are noted as confidential for a certain number of years and that usually has to do with various federal laws or state laws regarding individual personal privacy, because there's social security numbers and things like that in it. And, and when it comes to records from private individuals or student groups and all that, those are given to us. And, and in some cases, people do say that for a period of time, I would, I want the collection to come to UCLA, because it's going to be open to the public because you don't give us papers unless you want people to do research in them, because that's what we do. But they may have a certain amount of materials so for example, some a Hong does not want me to make available to people without their permission, any of their membership lists, they want to keep their membership lists confidential, but make it available to other Hong members. And, but there is, but there's always a mechanism by which we can open up materials so private individuals do have ability when they are donating materials to discuss with us ways in which they might limit access for a very limited period of time because we do that you know normally because of their own personal privacy concerns, but by and large when people are donating materials or when I am working with somebody and trying to persuade them to donate materials to me. I'm always explaining that, you know, to my view, it's an added benefit to give your records to a public institution because you don't have to have a reason you do not have to be a scholar you do not have to be affiliated with UCLA or be a citizen of the state or you can just want to learn something new you can just be curious and use library special collections at UCLA libraries. That's a great, great answer and they're coming in as your as you're answering. I'm going to go in order father asked to make sure I honor everybody's questions here. So, can you just give us a brief sense of some of the photos and the files from the daily Bruin. Oh, oh, this is this is marvelous because, for the most part, the daily Bruin keeps their own archive. And so, so what I have what I have right now from the daily Bruin is we have microfilmed all of the issues of the daily Bruin, also the Cub Californian and the normal daily. I always get the exponent was the Los Angeles State Normal School yearbook and I always forget and I was I was looking at it yesterday and I forget the title of it but we have them all. We have them all microfilmed, and they are currently available online. You and they are full text searchable. So, if you want to if you want to look at those let me know I can hook you up, even in this distance time when I have no access to collections, I can get you the daily Bruin wonderful. And, but that one of the things that I am right now working on is that in more recent years, the students who are on the daily Bruin, they've been keeping their own photographs because historically the daily Bruin kept an ASUC LA kept all their own photographs and keep that collection for their own uses. And lately students have been keeping their own archives and so I've been working with students who worked in the daily Bruin in the 90s to work on help finding if I can get some of their photographs to be able to add that to that larger photographic archive so so yes, you're doing a lot of connecting of the decades there. Yes, yes, well that that's what I do. So I want to shift a little bit and but but Harold Bronson you can go online and email Heather if you can't find those daily Bruin images I'm sure that she can connect you I can I can hook you up. I mean, as Oravichi asks, how do you deal with items that are born digital as opposed to on paper, like the email from today that you mentioned, what are the archives going to be like in the future people use paper less right. Well, they do and they don't you would be surprised how much paper I still find in offices that I still collect and I still, I still bring in the archive. So, so paper has the papers not dead yet, but you are right, most a lot of the things that we are creating today in everything whether it be audio video photographs emails. Word documents, they are electronic, and when you are preserving electron a born digital material, you want to keep it in the format that it started in to the extent possible. And I am very fortunate to have a colleague Shira Peltzman, who is our digital archivist genius. So I work with because she has been able to set us up a system where I can. So for example, what I would do if I was on campus, as I would be going out to the individual offices and meeting with them and talking with them about managing their email and what other of their born digital materials is actually archival, because not everything that everybody collects gets to come in the university archives that's always one of the things I'm like, your work is incredibly important. I just don't have a space. We just don't get it all. Yeah, we can't get it all. So, so I work with them to bring things in so what so actually what I am doing now I mean it's not very sophisticated because I do not have the access to our fancy setup that is in YRL. I've been doing lately as I've been saving things to box and to our network server so that because the main thing right now with anything born digital is that you lots of copies keep stuff safe, and the more your copies are networked rather than on various media, the better off there are the better chance you have of making those bits and bytes last longer so that is so that is what I did with the email today because the email today was about how during the holidays, I should support myself as a member of the UCLA committee community that does occasionally come to campus and so that I don't get COVID-19. And so because that is an official letter that went out I want to make sure that we saved it. Heather, you mentioned work that there are 1000 student groups and you're one person and I know you probably do a lot of work with them but Brianna is wondering, you know, what led you to work so closely with the Filipino students as opposed to say other student groups I'm sure you work with others. And then she was curious Brianna was curious about what the project might have been that spawned that really strong relationship you have. Well, one of the, I mean, I'm just lucky. I said, that's why I'm gonna say I'm just lucky. Well, first and foremost, I do I work with I reach out to lots and lots of student groups I don't always hear back, but I reach out to you know it's it there's a lot of you know virtual cold calling and cold emailing about like hi, I'm the university archivist. But in this case, one of the things is that the summer hung Filipino collection had actually started in the university archives back in the 90s. And, and it had started in the 90s and it was it, it, it's, it's a fairly decent sized collection and then I want to say in about 2015 so it had, it had laid. It had been, it had been quiet for a while, we'll say, and in 2015. They have a lot of the student groups have historians and and the current historian and the historian that had just been elected for the group. You know, they, it was one of those things where they had heard from one of their alumni that, hey, you know, we got an archive, we got an archive it's in the university archives you should go talk to them. And their first impetus was because they had a whole bunch of material in their office in Kirk off, and they wanted to get it out of the office in Kirk off. And so they came to me. And, and it was honestly it's it's a wonderful story because the incoming historian who helped bring the materials over from Kirk off. And he really honestly caught the archive bug and the history bug. And he, he, he, he decided that what he wanted to do was have an opportunity for all of the current and new members of summer home to come and look at their history. And so he created these little open houses that I would help him host, and, and what that has spawned over basically these last five years is every, every year, I get a really engaged historian, who, and in fact, even this year, remotely, I have a deeply engaged historian. And what happens is, is that they're continuing to donate materials they are continuing to have these outreach. They have little projects that they do with the collection. And they're just super engaged there. I do have to admit, I'm like, you two could be like some hung Filipino. And I do I have I have other I have other groups that I work with but they are by far. They, they love their history and I love people who love history. So it works for me. That's wonderful. Alison Smith asks, does the university archivist have an Instagram presence. He would love to see visual tidbits from UCLA history on a regular basis so I, I don't know if you want to speak to some of the broader goals we have for the UCLA library, having a collective presence, right and I can certainly do that. I certainly do that I was going to say that the UCLA is the university archives frequently participates in the Instagram of both the UCLA library, and currently, the library special collections, Instagram and Twitter and Facebook and all that. But one of the things that is happening either right now or I think I think in 2021 I'm not sure on the timing is that one of the great things is is that we're going to have less places for you to go look on the socials. And there's going to be one UCLA account, but that we can all contribute to so and and one of the things that I find because I follow them all if it's related to UCLA, I'm following you on Instagram. And one of the things that I find is that are the photographs that are in from UCLA or about UCLA are now being used by all sorts of different channels. Current social channels within the library so I have a feeling that when we are in in just a few channels as the voice of the library, you're going to see me around a lot. Wonderful. Thank you so much. That's a great answer and let's move on to Alva Stevenson. Hi, Heather. Do you have local state or federal government ever reached researched in the university archives and connections saying with proposed legislation. Now that is not what they have not done that since since I have been university archivist and I've been university archivist since July of 2014. So I have not, I've not been aware in advance of somebody doing research in our collections. I mean, every now and again I get a lot of questions about like, what are the leases on this part of land. I get lots of questions about what land we own what land we lease and I do a lot of research on those but I haven't seen anything in the university archives in regards to policies and procedures but also one of the things is you don't have to tell us why you're there and what you're doing so very private we probably very possibly could have had somebody doing exactly that kind of research and not now. And that's okay. We definitely like to protect our users and their privacy when they come into our collections but we do have some aggregate information about some questions that we often asks. This is what would come about from a response that Heather would have she would, what you just said, you know, there might be some questions but and these are some of what the types of questions are about leases and things like that. And most of the questions in fact that I answer aren't always from the general public. I mean, to be quite honest as I like to say it my largest user is the campus, because a lot of times the campus. does not remember everything that it has done. And so a lot of times I am contacted by departments and offices and individuals on campus, trying to find out if something. If I have any documentation or if I have any information on decisions we made or choices we made or maybe what the things we didn't choose. What were they about so I do wonderful. So as we're approaching the five minute warning we're not there yet I just want to let everybody in the audience know that your questions are wonderful, and our colleagues are going to be collecting them for Heather to maybe reach back out or work through the people who have registered and make sure we get some of your answers, just like we would any reference question. And here's a good one for you from race in a sack can you talk about the history of ROTC or ROTC on campus. Again, I can I not not in great depth, not in great depth I have to, I have to, and I and unfortunately I currently don't have access to those collections, but I will say that I have worked with them, not not in the last year or so but I have worked with them several times in regards to materials that were there still on site like photographs and scrapbooks that they still had, but the most work that I did with it was a few years ago. You may have seen an exhibit that I did in the Powell library on Arthur Ash, and if you came to the exhibit you know this but if you didn't come to the exhibit, I won't, I'll tell you are Arthur Ash was a member of the ROTC while on campus I was a part of the part of ROTC was at the time that he was here. A healthy male student, you had to be in the ROTC. And so I worked through our materials and did research in our materials in order to create that exhibit but the commandant that runs that they change pretty often so I always have to go back and reestablish that that relationship that I mean that is one of the things honestly that I spend the most time doing is developing relationships and renewing relationships and creating new relationships with people on campus because if the people on campus do not give me the records. I don't have anything. And I can attest to your wonderful relationship building everybody knows who you are and they're always happy to see you when you're showing up representing the university story. I hope they're happy to miss me. I'm always happy to see you too. I just want to ask a question. Do you know how early or late UCLA was and launching an African study American studies program, like the bunch letter, for example, compared to other large majority white universities, do you know where we situated that timeline for for African studies, we were African studies for African studies we were one of the earliest. We were one of the earliest and especially for large white majority white public institutions because because we were also one of the earliest ones that got title six funding from the federal from the federal government so I believe there there were probably earlier African studies programs or you know majors at some of the East Coast schools especially some of the private East Coast schools, but the I think there might have been a few more but we were we were one of the earlier we were one of the earlier ones and and that was actually that doing research for another exhibit because I did an exhibit at the to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the ethnic studies centers and and the 50th and 60th anniversaries of the first four international studies centers which were the African studies center, the Latin American Institute, the Near Eastern Near Eastern Studies Center, and the Russian and Eastern European Studies Center, and those were our first four, and of those two, the second one was the African studies center. Wonderful. There are so many questions here Heather and I know that we're capturing them and everybody knows your name and they're going to reach out so I'm going to ask. So you look I mean I can't Google university archivist at UCLA and you will find Heather smiling face. And I just wanted to give you one final question before we say our goodbye and our thanks and this is from Chancellor emeritus young. And he's asking if I want to write a book about my tenure. Can you help me with my archive and maybe we can expand it about people who have written books out of out of university archives. Yes, well, and yes, I can. And it's, it's a little bit hard right now because I actually am not on campus and don't have access to the materials. So it's the so we'd have to use virtual sources and digital sources at the moment, but but yes, I do that frequently with all sorts of researchers. What I do is I can, I can help and sit down and find out what it is, what what, whether it's your entire time which is a very long time at UCLA. Or just a particular aspect of it and what I do is I help researchers identify where the information and where the documentation that they might need might be in the university archives and one of the things that I find and that I tell departments and researchers quite a lot is that let me help you with your research because in many ways, I have access and can find things across the entirety of the university archive. So while there may be, and I know there are a lot of really interesting information in the Chancellor's records. There's also records in things like the Academic Senate, and there's records in student groups and, and in a lot of cases it is a bit of a hunt because the information is not where you'd expect it to be but that's what I do for researchers as I, I take what they want to know, and then work to find out where it, who would have written about that what part of the university would have dealt with that, and did they keep any papers, and do I have them. And, and sometimes I have to try a couple of different avenues, but we usually find some Oh, Heather finds it. It's there she'll find it. And I just want to before I do my official thanks there are some important people that Heather and I wish to think are the people that help put this together our guides, Julie out here, our colleagues and development and in communications and our university librarian and Jenny steel and our distinctive collections to lead Sharon Farb so there are so many players involved in this event for all of you so I hope you enjoyed it. We enjoyed it Heather and I don't get enough time together so this was fun for us to be together and I just wish to thank everyone and I'm going to close with the some remarks from someone who just chatted us and said, Heather we love your energy, it was a great program and thank you and I can't at all say more because that is exactly what this was a great program. We have your questions. We're good librarians will get back to you and please please keep on the lookout for future programs like this and let us know what you thought about this one when you hear from some of our colleagues. Thank you so much for coming. Bye.