Delegates from USC as well as museums, historical archives and other cultural institutions resolved to protect at-risk artifacts of regional history at a recent Scripps College colloquium.

The Japanese American National Museum, the American Indian Resource Center and the Libraries of the Claremont Colleges were among the organizations participating in the “Dusting Off the Archives” event in Claremont.

The panel was part of the Scripps College Humanities Institute lecture series, “L.A. Palimpsest: Recovering Los Angeles’ Hidden Stories and Forgotten Communities.”

Susan Anderson, managing director of the USC Libraries-based L.A. as Subject research collective, produced the event with Scripps professor and institute director Natalie Rachlin, Scripps librarian Judy Harvey Sahak and Claremont Colleges librarian Carrie Marsh.

USC librarian and university archivist Claude Zachary also served on the panel that explored the relationship between archives and the writing of history.

Anderson, who assumed leadership of L.A. as Subject in January, said, “The panel continues the work of L.A. as Subject in bringing to light hidden resources and the overlooked communities in the Los Angeles narrative. Everyone on the panel and many of the attendees are L.A. as Subject member institutions.”

The association helps its 228 members meet common challenges by collaborating on urgent preservation needs and issues of providing researchers easier access to Southern California historical archives. Many panelists and audience members likened their work to a guerrilla struggle against social forces that encourage forgetting in a time of rapid regional change.

“It’s a never-ending task to identify important programs and materials before they disappear and contact the people who are creating our region’s history,” Zachary said.

The panelists emphasized the importance of building trust in the communities they represent. Christine Noriko Paschild, director of collections at the Japanese American National Museum, said that trust was crucial in overcoming some families’ reluctance to donate materials related to draft resistance during World War II and other controversial aspects of Japanese-American history.

“As archivists,” she said, “one of our roles is to educate communities about what’s important to preserve. Our responsibility is to the future, so we collect materials that sometimes conflict with established, public narratives about the Japanese-American experience. The interest in the past changes over time, and our collections should reflect that.”

Michael McLaughlin, director of the County of Los Angeles Public Library’s American Indian Resource Center, cited difficulties with identifying the most significant historical materials in his collection – some of which are stored in unlabeled cardboard boxes.

“L.A. as Subject has been very helpful with locating archivists and curators with the expertise we need,” he said.

Other panelists and audience members described related challenges facing their institutions: building collections, improving indexing efforts and launching digital initiatives that will make their holdings more accessible to K-12 educators, historians and others with a stake in learning about Southern California history.

Noting the publicity benefits of digital accessibility, Claremont librarian Marsh said, “We’ve found that digital resources have brought many more people in to see our special collections. The more they learn through electronic access to our materials, the more intrigued they are by coming in to view them.”

L.A. as Subject plans to nurture mentoring relationships between established institutions such as the USC Libraries or the Japanese American National Museum and smaller organizations. The goal is to help community archives overcome budget limitations while strengthening their efforts to preserve fragile materials, develop educational programs and build public awareness of their collections.

“Rather than thinking everything should be in Claremont,” Marsh added, “we have to think like a network. This means sharing resources and referring scholars to other collections in the L.A. area.”

Said Anderson, “L.A. as Subject is dedicated to showing the importance of libraries and archives for writing history and understanding Los Angeles. If you want to truly understand any field of inquiry – or a complex subject such as Los Angeles – you must start by learning about its history.”