Cal State LA Special Collections and Archives collects and houses several important Los Angeles and Southern California-based collections that reflect the rich history and culture of Los Angeles. Our digital collections include newspapers, photographs, and audio files.
College/University Times Collection
The University Times is the student-run newspaper of California State University, Los Angeles. First published in June 1948, it was known simply as "Los Angeles State College". By October of that year, the newspaper was officially named "College Times". Then, in 1972, the College Times became the University Times, in accordance with Cal State LA's change to university status. In 1965 the College Times was named the best newspaper by California Intercollegiate Press.
Collection Call Number: UA 1990.001
Compton Communicative Arts Academy (CCAA)
The Compton Communicative Arts Academy (CCAA) collection is comprised of images that document African American art and culture, community-based art making, and art-based community making in Los Angeles during the early 1970s. The 200 items in this digital collection were selected from a collection of over 4,100 photographs, negatives, slides and ephemera by faculty members from the University Library and the Liberal Studies Department. The criteria for selection were images that illustrate buildings and places; the Academy's programming, artwork, and performances; artists, artwork, important people and events; and Willie B. Ford, Jr. as a photographer. This phase of the project was part of the California Local History Digital Resources Project supported by the U.S. Institute of Museum and Library Services under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act, and administered in California by the State Librarian.
Collection Call Number: MS 2006.001
Gloria Arellanes Papers
Gloria Arellanes (1946- ) is a political activist, former member of the Brown Berets and co-founder of "Las Adelitas de Aztlan," a Chicana feminist group active during the Chicanx Civil Rights Movement. The collection includes political flyers and broadsides, newspapers, books, buttons, posters and photographs dating from 1967 to the late 1970s.
Collection Call Number: MS 2010.001
MAW Collection
The Maw Collection is comprised of various artifacts from South America, Mesoamerica, Central America, Southwest America, and Midwest America. In 2021, Cal State LA and USC were awarded a nearly $500,000 grant from the Council on Library and Information Resources to catalog and digitize Mesoamerican and Spanish colonial materials, which has supported the accessibility of 360 Mesoamerican artifacts from the pre-classic, proto-classic, and classic period from the MAW collection. The cultures represented are Tlatico, Las Bocas, Chupicuaro, Mexcala, Olmec, Mixtec, Shaft Tomb, Tlapacoya, Zapote.
Collection Call Number: AR 2019.001
Mel Weisburd Papers
Melvin Irving Weisburd (1927-2015) was a prominent environmentalist, magazine editor, writer, and poet. Aside from his work with the Los Angeles County Air Pollution Control District, Weisburd is known for his contribution to the Los Angeles beatnik poetry movement of the 1950s. As a student at Los Angeles State College (Cal State LA), Weisburd met Thomas McGrath, a highly-regarded poet and English professor who influenced Weisburd’s passion for poetry. Weisburd went on to become a member of McGrath’s “Marsh Street Irregulars”, a group of poets who met every Wednesday night at McGrath’s Marsh Street home in the Elysian Valley, which was later demolished to make way for the I-5 and SR-2 highway interchange.
Collection Call Number: MS 2017.004
Listen to Weisburd Poetry Collection
REFORMA Archives
The official archives for REFORMA: The National Association to Promote Library and Information Services to Latinos and the Spanish-Speaking, established in 1971 as an affiliate of the American Library Association (ALA). The digital collection currently includes newsletters and reports.
Collection Call Number: MS 2022.006
Statement Magazine
Statement Magazine is a student publication that served as a journal of creative and critical expression for the student population of California State University, Los Angeles. This physical collection features all issues published from 1950 to 2019.
Yearbooks
The collection includes Cal State LA yearbooks from 1948 to present. The yearbook was not published between 1968-1975 as a result of anti-establishment philosophy held by many students.