USC Libraries

Victor Wellington Peters, USC’s oldest alumnus, died Aug. 12 at the age of 109. Peters graduated from USC's College of Liberal Arts in 1924 with a B.A. in fine arts. In 2006, Peters donated a collection of letters—now available through the USC Digital Library—that he wrote in Korea between 1928 and 1941. Keep reading to learn more about Peters' life.

Since 2002, the USC Center for Religion and Civic Culture and the USC Libraries have partnered with archives around the world to digitize more than 82,000 historical photographs by Christian missionaries and make them publicly available through the USC Digital Library. Now, two new grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) totaling $305,000 will allow USC and partner archives to add an additional 20,000 images to the International Mission Photography Archive (IMPA) database. NEH funding will also support development of video essays that bring IMPA collections together with scholarly analysis and digital storytelling methods. Keep reading to learn more about IMPA.

Historian Andrew G. Jameson returns to Doheny Memorial Library as the featured speaker at the March 20 Friends of the USC Libraries Literary Luncheon. Jameson, director emeritus of Books for Asia of the Asia Foundation and president emeritus of the Academy of Art University in San Francisco, will discuss the historical treasures of St. Catherine's Monastery and the Codex Sinaiticus, one of the oldest books in the world. Admission includes lunch, parking, and the lecture and costs $50 for Friends of the USC Libraries members and $65 for non-members. The luncheon begins at 11:30 a.m in Doheny Library's Ground Floor Rotunda. Jameson's lecture, which starts at 1:00 p.m., is free and open to the public. 

The Sunday, December 4 issue of the Los Angeles Times Magazine featured several photographs of Temple Emanuel from the USC Libraries' Sidney Eisenshtat Papers. The magazine feature, titled "Back to Shul," used the libraries' vintage photographs to compare architect Sidney Eisenshtat's original design with recent renovations made to the Beverly Hills temple. Keep reading to learn more about the Eisenshtat Papers collection, housed at USC's Helen Topping Architecture and Fine Arts Library.

This week's edition of the USC Chronicle highlights the USC Libraries' Sidney Eisenshtat Papers collection, preserved in the Helen Topping Architecture & Fine Arts Library. As Dan Knapp writes in his article, the collection consists of letters, engineering specifications, drawings, renderings, and photographs from the career of Sidney Eisenshtat, the architect of Westwood's Sinai Temple. Keep reading to learn more about the architect, his work, and the libraries' Eisenshtat Papers collection.

Writing for the USC News website, Ambrosia Viramontes-Brody recently highlighted the collaboration between the USC Libraries and USC's Center for Religion and Civic Culture to collect, catalogue, digitize documents related to the global growth of Pentecostal and charismatic Christianity. Keep reading to learn more about the Pentecostal and Charismatic Research Archive, which will be publicly accessible across the globe through the USC Digital Library.

The Voice of America radio network recently featured the International Mission Photography Archive, a collaboration between the USC Libraries and USC's Center for Religion and Civic Culture. Through the project, twelve major archives have contributed more than 60,000 historical photographs of Christian missionaries operating in Asia and Africa, which are now publicly accessible online through the USC Digital Library. Click through for an excerpt and audio clip of the report by the Voice of America's Mike O'Sullivan.

Archivist Rebecca Hirsch of the USC Libraries recently finished processing the papers of Thomas Kilgore, Jr. (1913-98), a civil rights leader and a longtime pastor at the Second Baptist Church of Los Angeles. The collection, which Kilgore's daughter donated to the USC Libraries in 2010, is an important resource for scholars of the civil rights movement. Keep reading to learn more about the collection.

Victor Wellington Peters, who at 108 is USC’s oldest living alumnus, returned to his alma mater November 15 for a special tour of the USC Libraries’ Korean Heritage Library. In 2006, Peters donated archives from his time as a missionary in Japanese-occupied Korea to the USC Libraries. Keep reading to learn more about Peters and to see photos from his visit to the Korean Heritage Library.

On September 9, a USC Digital Library record became the two-millionth record entered into the WorldCat Digital Collection Gateway database. Keep reading to learn more about the Digital Library record, created as part of the International Mission Photography Archive.