SJSU SLIS ALASC’s Tour of the Nixon Presidential Library & Museum

By Alison Leonard

In April, John Jackson, ALA Student Chapter Program Coordinator, organized a tour for San Jose State University’s School of Library and Information Science American Library Association Student Chapter (SJSU SLIS ALASC) of the Nixon Presidential Library & Museum in Yorba Linda, California.

The Nixon Library contains over 50 million documents relating to Nixon's time in office, consisting of more than 500,000 photographs, 700 hours of film, over 4,000 hours of "off air" video recordings, and 4,469 audio recordings, including the infamous "Nixon White House tapes." Additional information on the collection is available on the Library's website.

The tour was led by Dr. Gregory Cumming, Supervisory Archivist for the Nixon Library. Greg has formerly worked in the archives at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Foundation.  The Nixon Library requires that all archivists be experts in certain periods of time in history. Greg’s expertise is in post-World War II American history.  The Library encourages their archivists to develop one-on-one relationships with researchers in order to assist them. Therefore, Greg has formed many professional relationships.

How Do You Build a Library?

by Giovanna Forsyth

As current or aspiring librarians and archivists, we've all been to a really spectacular library. You know the one I'm talking about: with stairs leading to columns leading to a rotunda leading to a big oak desk, where you pass along all your vital information so that someone will go into a deep, dark cold vault and bring you something terribly old and awesome.  The first time I experienced this, I was in complete awe.  It was all so perfect, and I knew I wanted to be a part of it.  It never really occurred to me to think about how it all started, nor had  I even considered how a library goes about running so seamlessly.