Occidental College
Library
College History
Three Oxy students on the steps of the Hall of Letters, Highland Park campus in 1910. The Academy is in background.
About the College Archives
What we do
The College Archives were established in 1971 as a division of the Department of Special Collections in the Mary Norton Clapp Library and serves as the institutional memory of the College. We document the history of Occidental College by identifying, collecting, preserving and providing access to records by and about the College. We also promote and facilitate use of its holdings to faculty, staff, students, alumni, and scholars and serve as a research center for the study of Occidental College history.
What we collect
Our holdings include materials in both print and electronic format. Some of these are campus publications, faculty and alumni files, photographs, scrapbooks, sound and video recordings, and architectural plans dating from the founding of the College in 1887 to the present. Notable records are Oxy’s founding documents, material from the Board of Trustees, and papers of past Occidental presidents. Some online resources are:
- Search the Oxy alumni magazine: The Occidental. Currently available for the years 1921 to 1936 and 2004 to 2012 only. We'll get the rest done as soon as we can!
- Visit our Web Archives where we preserve copies of College Website and a selection of Northeast Los Angeles websites in Archive-It.
- For photos of our Myron Hunt-designed campus, please see the "Occidental College Campus Historical Photos" digital collection.
- In Summer 2012, we launched OxyCorps whereby current students interview alumni about their time at Occidental producing 58 video/oral histories that broaden the college history and document liberal arts college life of the 20th century.
Please see the LibGuide or contact us for more information.