Special Collections welcomes students and faculty back for Spring Semester 2009. We're ready for an exciting semester!To celebrate Black History Month in February, we'll be featuring the exhibit "Creating Community: African Americans in San Diego." Produced through a Presidential Leadership Fund grant, this exhibit will use captivating selections from manuscript collections held in Special Collections. (Reverend George Walker Smith Papers, Alpha Pi Boule Records, Carlin Integration Case Records, Leon Williams Papers, and Records of the School Integration Task Force). Through photographs, newspaper and magazine articles, letters, legal documents, and brochures in these collections, "Creating Community" illustrates how San Diego's African Americans transitioned from being a small group of geographically scattered individuals and families to the thriving community of today. Education, culture, business, and economics are just some of the many aspects of the community covered in this exhibit. The exhibit will begin January 22nd in the Donor Hall and run through June 15th. Within Special Collections, a complementary exhibit on the history of African Americans at San Diego State will be on display, using items from the University Archives about student organizations, academics, events, athletics, and alumni. To launch these exhibits, Shirley Weber, chair of Africana Studies at SDSU, will discuss “Building African American Communities: A Legacy of Resistance and Resiliency” on February 4 at 5:30 p.m. in Room LL430 of the SDSU Library.
We are also hosting a full schedule of classes once again this semester, and as usual we're really looking forward to meeting new students, showing all the amazing materials we hold here, and teaching strategies for how to find and use them effectively! We wish you a productive Spring Semester, and encourage you to drop by the Reading Room to get to know us better.
