The UCLA Library has received a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to expand the scope of the Center for Primary Research and Training by creating a new program that focuses on the performing arts.
The purpose of the CPRT, as well as of the new extended program, is to organize library collections to make them more accessible while giving graduate students the opportunity to work directly with archive materials.
The CPRT was established in 2004, said Dawn Setzer, the director of UCLA library communications, and it provides archival experience to graduate students.
The grant, which is worth $143,000, will allow for a new pilot program to be created, called the Center for Primary Research and Training Plus.
It will expand the current center, which averages about seven students per quarter, said Elizabeth Sheehan, coordinator of the center.
“(The new pilot program is) an outgrowth of how successful this program was,” she said. “They will be basing the CPRT Plus on this program, but they will be pursuing arts-related projects.”
While the current center focuses on social sciences and humanities collections, Sheehan said she would like to see the program extended to other fields.
Students will participate in the new program for a year, rather than a quarter, specializing on collections in the performing arts, University Librarian Gary Strong said in a statement.
The new collections to be organized include materials in dance, film, music, television and theater, according to the statement.
The sources to be processed include archives from film and television studios, scripts, documentation from the Los Angeles jazz movement, and recordings of American music since 1790.
Materials also include sound recordings, films, media clippings, memos, music scores and photographs.
Aislinn Sotelo, a graduate student in library and information science, participated in the CPRT for almost three quarters, working with the records of a British diplomat during the Napoleonic wars.
“The center works by allowing students to work with primary source materials,” Sotelo said. “(The students get) hands-on, timeless research in their area, and it helps the center by having the materials processed by students who are familiar with that area.”
A unique aspect of the program is that students are given the choice to work with the collections in their area of research.
Because Sotelo was studying to be an archivist while participating in the program, she said she could work with archive materials from many different fields and topics, but she chose to work with the historical documents because her undergraduate degree is in history.
She submitted her thesis, and Sotelo said she plans to stay with the university library, working as the Charles E. Young Research Library Department of Special Collections office coordinator.