Discover Themes

Image, text, and audiovisual material relating to topics of anti-war activism. Content includes: World War I, 1914 to 1918; The Vietnam War, 1967 to 1973; The Cambodian Civil War, 1967 to 1975; and the Iraq War, 2003 to 2011. Other material includes relevant college protests, media coverage, political demonstrations, and political graphics.  

Audiovisual material relating to topics about California Chicano history. Content includes histories about the Mexican Revolution in the 1910s, the Chicano Movement of the 1960s, Chicano visual arts, and news coverage about Chicano protests and police brutality. Other material includes recorded oral interviews and histories with leading Chicano figures like Cesar Chavez, Juanishi Orosco, and Daniel Valdez.

Audiovisual material relating to California environmental activism. Content includes words from the spokesperson of the Citizens for the Preservation of Santa Rosa Creek, scenes from University of California, Davis's Whole Earth Festival, and protests from the Redwood National Park against logging. Other material includes images of the Delta Fish Facility and the 1969 Santa Barbara oil spill.

Images and audiovisual material relating to California architecture and its historic built environment. Content includes recorded oral interviews with California painters, architects, designers, and artists, such as Jack Matson, Helen Dowd, and Paul Lingren. Other material includes information about the architectural growth of California cities such as San Diego, Monterey, Los Angeles, and San Francisco.

Audiovisual and image material relating to California's computer and technology industry. A majority of the themed collection pertains to the West Coast Computer Faire, an annual computer industry conference and exposition first organized in 1977. Topics include computer building, software, graphics, and medical practices. Other material focuses on Silicon Valley and California's emerging computer industry.

Text, image, and audiovisual material relating to acts of self-sufficiency, including, but not limited to, cooking, gardening, crafting, and schooling.

Audiovisual, text, and image material relating to topics of incarceration in California. Material includes jail registers from Madera County and moving images of Folsom and San Quentin Prison. This theme also features the California Arts-In-Corrections program, an administrative office within the California Department of Corrections, which oversaw the staffing of artist-facilitators at all prisons in California from 1983 to 2009.

Materials designated to be in the public domain and are free of known copyright restrictions. Works in the public domain are licensed under a Creative Common's Public Domain Dedication (CC0) license and are downloadable at the Internet Archive. 

Audiovisual, image, and text material relating to trains and the railroad. Content includes correspondence between railroad executives, moving images of trains, and still images of railroad life. Other material consists of ticket stubs, dining car menus, and Southern Pacific bulletins. 

These materials tells the history of California wildfires dating from the late 1960s to the late 2010s. Objects in this theme range from filmed oral histories of community members telling their stories of surviving California wildfires, informational videos about wildfires, and films and photographs showing past wildfire burns.

A wide range of moving images, printed materials, photographs, sound recordings, and books from 1800s to the 2000s that celebrate women's achievements, professions and passions.