Research Guide to Archives and Special Collections

The Big Pine Citizen was the weekly newspaper of Big Pine, California, a town in the northern Owens Valley of the California Sierras. The Big Pine Citizen Newspaper Collection holds issues from the years 1922, and 1924 to 1928, at the height of the Owens Valley Water Wars between the City of Los Angeles and the people of the Owens Valley over the control of land and corresponding water rights.

Catholicism in Los Angeles offers a unique look into Los Angeles history and its rich Roman Catholic roots, focusing on the themes of education and social justice. This is a curated digital collection with selected materials from the Workman Family Papers and the Dockweiler Family Papers, including those detailing the life of social activist Mary Julia Workman and her contributions to education in Los Angeles. The Dockweiler family is a Roman Catholic family long distinguished in Los Angeles civic, legal, and social life.

From the Werner von Boltenstern Postcard Collection, this selection of postcards focuses on Los Angeles and cities in Southern California, featuring prominent landmarks, historical buildings, amusement parks and rides, businesses and shopping centers, celebrities' homes, hotels, parks, highways, transportation, religious and educational institutions, as well as general views.

Cura Personalis: Lions with Disabilities is an ongoing collection of oral histories, testimonies, interviews, and artifacts donated by members of the LMU community with disabilities.

This collection features playbills of the Del Rey Players, the student-run theater group founded at Loyola University in 1932. The Del Rey Players continue to stage productions to this day, making them one of the oldest student organizations on the Loyola Marymount University campus.

This collection features archival documents and photographs from the Dockweiler family, which held a distinguished place in 19th and 20th-century Los Angeles. Dockweiler family members influenced city, state, and national politics, and they were noted personages of Los Angeles society.

From the Bruce Ferrini Liturgical Manuscript Leaf Collection and the Otto Ege portfolios, this digital collection shows a variety of leaves from medieval manuscripts and printed books from the 15th century through the 20th century.

This collection features selected postcards of significant holidays, such as Valentine’s Day, Easter, Fourth of July, Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year, as well as greeting postcards of birthday, humor, and special occasions.

This collection contains surveyors' field books, plat maps and other maps from Southern California counties, spanning the years from 1855 to 1968, recording the ownership of Californio ranchos from 1858 onward and their subsequent divisions and development, old downtown Los Angeles, and creations of counties in Southern California.

The Ichikawas were a Japanese American family living in Los Angeles for most of the 20th century. After Executive Order 9066 was issued in 1942, the Ichikawas were forcibly detained at the Pomona Assembly Center and then incarcerated at the Heart Mountain Relocation Center, an American concentration camp in Wyoming. The digital collection includes two scrapbooks documenting their incarceration at Heart Mountain.

The Inclusive History and Images Project (IHIP), an important component of LMU’s ongoing university-wide anti-racism initiative, seeks to address important gaps in understanding our own institutional history by gathering stories and images from alumni and the greater LMU community to tell the full and inclusive LMU story.

This collection presents selected postcards from the Werner von Boltenstern Postcard Collection. It features postcards of architecture and monuments from the Muslim world, including Algiers, Cairo, Cordoba, Damascus, Istanbul, Jerusalem, Tangier, and Tunis.

The J.D. Black Papers document the legacy of Owens Valley life-long residents. These digitized selections richly illustrate aspects of the famed Water Wars between the City of Los Angeles and the people of that valley in the 1920s, the defining moment in the modern history of the valley. Of particular value are the records of the reparations organizations of Big Pine active during the Owens Valley Water Wars of the 1920s and the photographs documenting life in the mining towns of California's eastern Sierras and western Nevada.

The Jesuit Rare Book and Manuscript Collection, 1540-1800, contains selections of early printed books and manuscripts by and about the Jesuits from the rare book holdings of the Hannon Library’s Archives & Special Collections. These works illuminate the religious and academic foundations of the Society of Jesus, their missionary work, and their intellectual and creative engagement with the Scientific Revolution.

The Jim and Jeanne Pieper Collection consists of almost 900 artifacts gifted to Loyola Marymount University. Items for this digital collection were selected to be representative of the many faith traditions encompassed by the physical collection, as well as a sampling of geographical areas.

The John August Swanson (1938-2021) Collection archives his Studio's digital files used to document his artworks--in production and completed--and to manage his Studio.

This collection consists of film stills and photographs from movies that John W. Boyle (1891-1959), an American cinematographer, shot in the 1910s and 1920s. Boyle began shooting films by 1915 and worked closely with director J. Gordon Edwards and consequently with such actresses as Theda Bara. This collection also features Silent Era stars Albert Roscoe, William Farnum, and Louise Lovely and provides a behind-the-scenes look at moviemaking in the Silent Era, including sets, equipment, and crews.

Student-run newspapers and periodicals have been a longstanding tradition in LMU’s history, beginning in 1920 with The Cinder in the Eye, the official newspaper of Loyola College. In 1923 the newspaper’s name changed to The Loyolan, and later to The Los Angeles Loyolan, which is currently published weekly in print and updated daily online.

In 2018, William H. Hannon Library began a partnership with the Internet Archive’s Archive-It solution to begin comprehensively archiving LMU webpages.

Student-run newspapers and periodicals have been a longstanding tradition in LMU’s history since 1920. The Los Angeles Loyolan publishes a weekly print paper and daily online content for the greater Loyola Marymount University community.

This collection features a selection of photographs and records from the LMU University Archives, documenting students, faculty, administrators, visitors, buildings, and the landscape of the campus as it has grown over the last one hundred years.

The Inclusive History and Images Project (IHIP), an important component of LMU’s ongoing university-wide anti-racism initiative, seeks to address important gaps in understanding our own institutional history by gathering stories and images from alumni and the greater LMU community to tell the full and inclusive LMU story.

This collection consists of yearbooks between 1954 and 2012 from Loyola University of Los Angeles and Loyola Marymount University.

This digital collection was launched in 2023, commemorating the 50th anniversary of the merger of Marymount College and Loyola University on July 1, 1973. This collection includes correspondence from Loyola University presidents Reverend Charles S. Casassa, S.J. and Reverend Donald P. Merrifield, S.J., and Marymount College president Sister M. Raymunde McKay, R.S.H.M., with university associates.

The printed word was one of the most influential tools of the Protestant Reformation. Using the printing press to spread their propaganda, “reformers” and “defenders” were able to reach a wide audience in sixteenth-century Europe, igniting both religious and social upheaval. This collection features pamphlets and treatises produced by leading Reformation era voices, including Martin Luther, Henry VIII of England, Philip Melancthon and others.

This collection features twenty-nine unique stained glass windows found in Loyola Marymount University’s iconic chapel. Twenty-eight of the windows feature a religious figure and a seal representing one of the Jesuit Colleges or Universities in the United States.

Originally published in 1974, Ujima newspaper and newsletter provided a platform for Loyola Marymount University's Black Student Freedom Alliance (BSFA) to inspire students on campus to engage in the third principle of Kwanzaa for which the publication was named: Ujima means "collective work and responsibility." As printed in the first issue of Ujima newspaper, their goal was "to inform, advertise and hopefully, educate” a growing and active Black student body.

The Venegas Family Papers document the history of Dolores (1900-1991) and Miguel Venegas (1897-1994) and their family. Originally from Zapotlanejo, Jalisco, Mexico, Dolores (“Lola”) and Miguel immigrated to Los Angeles in 1927 as refugees from the Cristero Rebellion. The correspondence between family members settled in L.A. and those in Mexico shed light on their immigration experience. Items in this digital collection contain correspondence, documents, and photographs.

Vida newspaper, also called Vida Today, amplified the voices and concerns of the Chicana/o/x and other marginalized communities at Loyola Marymount University from the early 1970s until the late 1990s. Published by the university chapter of El Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlán (M.E.Ch.A.) and moderated by the Department of Chicano Studies, the publication covered critical local, national, and international events impacting the Chicano/a/x community.

This collection currently features postcards of cities in the Owens Valley, including Bishop, Big Pine, Lone Pine, and Olancha.

This collection features photographs taken by Werner von Boltenstern, recording life in Shanghai, China, in the war-torn years from 1937 through 1949. The greatest importance of the collection rests in its remarkable photographic documentation of the Jewish community of Shanghai, consisting mostly of Jewish refugees fleeing the Holocaust.