USC Libraries

Materials from the ONE National Gay & Lesbian Archives are on display in a new exhibition inside the Los Angeles City Hall. Located in City Hall’s third-floor Bridge Gallery, Defiant Spaces: 60 Years of Queer Organizations in L.A. is a retrospective look at 44 LGBT organizations founded in Southern California. Keep reading to learn more about the exhibition, which is part of the City of Los Angeles’ Lesbian, Bisexual, Gay and Transgender Heritage Month.

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.

The USC Libraries' Christa Zinner Collection of fashion photography documents over three decades of work by Zinner, whom Dan Knapp calls a "pioneering woman in a field once dominated by men" in a recent article for the USC News website. Zinner's photography appeared in countless publications, from Los Angeles Magazine to Seventeen and from Sports Illustrated to Glamour. Zinner donated the collection, which includes prints, negatives, proofs, slides, and magazine clippings of her work, to the USC Libraries in 1998. Click through for Knapp's article and selected images from the Zinner Collection.

Queer Worldmaking opened Tuesday, January 24 in Doheny Memorial Library. The new exhibition explores LGBT activism and culture in postwar L.A. through photographs, scrapbooks, recordings, films, documents, and costumes fom the ONE National Gay & Lesbian Archives. Queer Worldmaking is part of ONE's Cruising the Archive series of exhibitions and is held in conjunction with the Getty's Pacific Standard Time initiative. Stop by the first-floor Treasure Room by May 31 to see the exhibition, and don't miss the Daily Trojan's recent coverage of the exhibition's opening.

Though sometimes overlooked, the LGBT experience in postwar L.A. forms an important part of national LGBT history. Now, a new exhibition opening January 24 in Doheny Memorial Library's first-floor Treasure Room will explore the activism and artistic contributions of L.A.'s LGBT community from the 1940s to the 1980s. Held in conjunction with the Getty's Pacific Standard Time initiative, Queer Worldmaking features photographs, scrapbooks, recordings, films, and other documents—as well as costumes and other ephemera—from the ONE National Gay & Lesbian Archives. Keep reading to learn more about the exhibition and two events on Tuesday, January 24 that will mark its opening.

On July 13, California Governor Jerry Brown signed into law an act requiring public schools to incorporate the achievements of gays and lesbians into history and social studies curricula. As teachers create new lesson plans, many will turn to the USC Libraries' ONE National Gay & Lesbian Archives collection—the world's largest research collection related to LGBT history. Keep reading to learn more about the ONE Archives collection and how it can serve as a resource for California educators.

The USC Libraries have added 33 new electronic resources to support USC's teaching and research needs. By mid-July, USC students, faculty, and staff will be able to access to the new databases, electronic journals, and other digital resources through the E-Resources tab on the USC Libraries homepage.

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.

Former U.S. Secretary of State Warren Christopher died on March 18 at the age of 85. The USC Libraries are home to the papers of the Christopher Commission, a 1991 commission chaired by the statesman and tasked with examining the practices and culture of the Los Angeles Police Department after the Rodney King beating. Keep reading to learn more about the collection, which the libraries are currently processing as part of Excavating L.A.: USC's Hidden Southern California Historical Collections.

Author and USC School of Policy, Planning, and Development assistant professor Elizabeth Currid-Halkett will discuss the business of celebrity on March 10 at 11:30 a.m. in the Friends of the USC Libraries Literary Luncheon inside Doheny Memorial Library. In her book, Starstruck: the Business of Celebrity, Currid-Halkett examines the reasons for -- and implications of -- the public's fascination with popular entertainers, artists, and athletes. Keep reading to learn more about the event.