California Revealed

ALA Free Webinars | Hand in Hand: Connecting, Supporting, and Sustaining California Memory Labs

Join us Thursday, April 30, 11 AM (PT) / 2 PM (ET) for a conversation on California-based Memory Labs through public libraries and beyond. Thanks to ALA's Core: Leadership, Infrastructure, Futures Team for presenting this free, public webinar.

Registration is open! Visit https://preservationweek.org/free-webinars/memory-labs/

About the Webinar:
Who gets to preserve their memories? Who gets to contribute to community history? Photographs, videotapes, old concert tickets… memories come in all forms, and when shared, build community and become a part of our living history. Memory labs provide the opportunity to digitize people’s materials and preserve individual, familial, and collective memory in service of the historical record.

The California Memory Lab Network includes over 25 public libraries, in addition to a growing network of community-based organizations leading preservation initiatives. This webinar will introduce the Memory Lab model, highlight California Revealed’s pilot program to build new community-based archives through their public library partnerships, and offer resources to reinforce the national network, including a new California Memory Lab Handbook, as well as digitization kits. We will highlight the work of the South Pasadena Public Library, who are exploring options to make their Memory Lab more ADA-friendly.

While we will not sugarcoat challenges (such as sustainability and network building), we believe participants bring so much love, appreciation, and understanding of the revolutionary applicability and flexibility of the model that the webinar will be positive, uplifting, and in many ways liberating. We hope this discussion will inspire folks interested in starting up a memory lab or seeking advice for maintaining one.

🔄 Are you wanting to start a digitization project but don’t know where to begin? What does “digital readiness” mean? And how are you going to store all of those big files?

Bring your questions and join us for a free digital preservation training webinar series to help your organization care for and maintain long-term access to its digital collections. All webinars will be at noon and open to all!

💾 Tuesday March 31
Digital Preservation Models and Policies

💾 Tuesday April 14
Prepare for Digitization: Identifying, Assessing, and Prioritizing

💾 Tuesday April 28
Digital Storage 101

💾 Tuesday May 5
Digital Collection Development, Outreach, and Programming

RSVP to attend any webinar: https://airtable.com/appsxcjsOigOIxUcG/pagg6s8tneQs2ZzdR/form

Questions? Visit californiarevealed.org/digitalpreservationplanning or contact us at [email protected].

Feliz día de San Valentín / Happy Valentine's Day 💘

🕊 El Refugio 03 (1972/1975)

Love as embrace, care, and admiration for the world around us and the lives we share it with. This collaborative piece by Carlos Bueno and Antonio Ibáñez is an early testament to their longtime partnership and the foundation of Self Help Graphics and Art (SHG). Bueno and Ibáñez often integrated their names directly into the artwork, as seen in the penciled inscription along the bottom.

As one of America's most recognized Latino printmaking centers, SHG is committed to innovative approaches, working with artists in traditional and non-traditional printmaking processes to develop culturally relevant, responsive, and investigative content. SHG has published more than 2,200 serigraphs and themed Ateliers (portfolios), representing diverse local and international communities.

♥ View the print online: https://californiarevealed.org/do/d5946926-fffe-4c06-96ae-b8e14f85603b /1

✏️ These handwritten memory cards were created by community members during the Black Panther Party History Workshop, part of Commons Archive public programming held at the Golden Gate Library in Oakland in 2018. Written in the moment, they reflect how the Black Panther Party shaped people’s everyday lives in California.

Participants were asked one question: “How have you been touched by the Black Panther Party?” Their responses speak to community care, political education, food programs, and collective responsibility, illustrating how the Party’s work extended far beyond protest and continues to influence how communities organize, support one another, and imagine justice.

These reflections show how the legacy of the Black Panther Party remains present today. The ideas documented here—mutual aid, self-determination, and caring for one another—are not historical artifacts but living practices carried forward across generations. View the entire Memory Card series: https://bit.ly/BlackPantherPartyHistoryWorkshopwithCommonsArchive

California Revealed is committed to preserving community-rooted histories like these because documenting the past also helps us understand the present and build a better future. In moments of uncertainty and distortion, archives remain a place where memory, accountability, and collective knowledge are held with care.

⏪ On December 3, 2025, the Association of Moving Image Archivists (AMIA) hosted an Archival Screening Night at the Parkway Theatre in Baltimore, MD. The guest of honor, Dr. Carla Hayden, former Librarian of Congress, received AMIA’s inaugural Legacy Award. The award honors individuals whose visionary leadership, advocacy, and lifelong commitment to access have significantly advanced the field of media preservation.

The eclectic lineup included film clips from around the world and from the very heart of Baltimore history. We screened a five-minute clip from the Bette Yarbrough Cox Collection at the UCLA Ethnomusicology Archive for an audience of moving image archivists, memory workers, and Dr. Hayden herself.

In this clip, 95-year-old James Hubert “Eubie” Blake reflects on a lifetime in music, playing piano from memory. Born in Baltimore, Blake first learned gospel and classical styles before embracing the rhythms of ragtime. The footage comes from Bette Y. Cox’s Black Experience as Expressed Through Music (BEEM) project: decades of interviews documenting Black musical life across jazz, classical, gospel, and popular traditions.

The collection is preserved with California Revealed, providing online access to materials that celebrate California’s history, arts, and cultures.

🎥 https://youtu.be/mJ05xsp-i_8

AMIA Archival Screening Night 2025—clip from BEEM episode featuring Eubie Blake (1983) Holding Institution: UCLA Ethnomusicology Archivehttps://californiarevealed.org/partner/university-of-california-los-angeles-ethnomusicology-archiveOriginal ...

Taken nearly a hundred years ago, these photographs show Novato students ready for the school day ahead. Even the PTA is in full swing to plan the next semester together. Today, many young students are heading back to class from their Winter break. Back to familiar routines and classroom friendships that mark the start of the season.

From the collections of the Novato Historical Guild, a volunteer nonprofit founded in 1976 to support the Novato History Museum and the Hamilton Field History Museum, in partnership with the City of Novato.

Image titles in order of appearance:
✏ Schools: Burdell, Student Body in 1926
✏ Schools: Burdell, One-room school, Three step front porch, 1920s
✏ Groups and Organizations: P.T.A., Group of women, Busher home, 1931
✏ Schools: Burdell, twelve students outside, Front door, 1953

The California Revealed Digital Repository (californiarevealed.org) is both an online access platform and a collection of digital objects (including preservation masters, access copies, thumbnails of the original, and metadata) stored offline on Linear Tape Open (LTO) data tape in two geographically separate locations. Currently, we are funded to provide 24/7 storage costs, employ our team part-time, and keep the lights on. We remain open and are committed to providing our essential preservation services for years to come as we continue to fundraise and seek the support of our communities!

💽 Thanks to the Groundwork Grants program, administered by the California State Library in partnership with Myriad Consulting, we are offering partner organizations backup copies of their "legacy" files from previous grant cycles (before 2024/2025).

🖥 In Spring 2026, we will offer a digital preservation training webinar series to help your organization care for and maintain long-term access to its digital files. Topics will be developed based on responses to the form.

📝 The Request Form will remain open until the end of July 2026: https://airtable.com/appsxcjsOigOIxUcG/pagg6s8tneQs2ZzdR/form

Please note if your organization has its own hard drive. We have a limited budget to provide hard drives as needed. Our first review of requests will be in January 2026. We will fulfill requests in the order in which we receive them.

Questions? Contact Us: [email protected]

Night by night, the light grows 🕎 Happy Hanukkah!

🕯Lighting the Menorah, Bet Tzedek (1980) from the Jewish Historical Society of Southern California: https://californiarevealed.org/do/bf6ad37d-c937-4e01-b96f-fc7b7f6042ac /1

A photo of Hormoz Farhat (founder of the UCLA Music of Persia Ensemble) from the Jewish Historical Society of Southern California. The photo is captioned: "Rabbi Samuel Dinin with three foreign students at the Jewish Community Library in 1953. They are standing in front of the Bisno Book Collection. The students are Margaret Siguenza of Japan; Mrs. Lanie Farhat, American and her husband Hormoz Farhat of Iran. The tour was under National Student Association sponsorship." It is online as part of California Revealed. https://archive.org/details/calajhs_000976

✴️ A special series spotlight: “Henry P. Anderson papers, 1944-2014” from the Labor Archives and Research Center ()

The Bracero Program brought millions of Mexican men to work in California’s fields. Their labor shaped this state, yet their stories were rarely treated with the respect they deserved.

The archives show what official history often softens: workers photographed, numbered, sprayed with chemicals, and housed in conditions that ignored their humanity. These materials bring the workers’ side into focus through interviews, notes, and photographs that preserve their experiences.

These records help us confront the truth about labor, migration, and power in California. Not to reopen wounds but to learn and to make different choices today. Supporting this work means these stories aren’t hidden in boxes. They stay accessible to families, researchers, and communities who deserve the whole truth. Preservation is justice and a way to build a better future for all of us.

🍂 Giving Thanks for California Revealed: Save California Stories

Each year, communities, nonprofits, and individuals unite to support work that strengthens our shared future. For California Revealed, that shared future means protecting the stories, histories, and cultural memory of California communities—especially those whose voices have not always been heard or preserved. This , we are raising funds to establish a financial foundation from which we can rebuild our programs and save California stories.
Donate to save California stories—YOUR stories!
🔗 bit.ly/Save-California-Stories