California Revealed

09/28/2026

There's still time to apply to the 2026/2027 Call for Collections! ☎️
Deadline is September 30 ⏰: https://airtable.com/appqqQIF2Hi3x6qS4/pagDjkiEcMU5xpNzq/form

☎️ Now Open: 2026/2027 Call for Collections

California Revealed invites libraries, archives, museums, and community heritage groups to share your collections and preservation needs! We support digitization of physical audiovisual and print-based materials, as well as digital preservation for existing digital collections.

Collections will be accepted depending on available funding in response to our current fundraising efforts. If your organization has its own funding to pursue a digitization project with California Revealed, please let us know - we’d like to work with you to expand public access and discovery of your local history!

🌐 Learn more about our digitization and preservation support: californiarevealed.org/digitize-and-preserve

💌Submission deadline and first review of responses: September 30, 2025

Questions welcome! Email us: [email protected]

09/02/2026

☎️ Now Open: 2026/2027 Call for Collections

California Revealed invites libraries, archives, museums, and community heritage groups to share your collections and preservation needs! We support digitization of physical audiovisual and print-based materials, as well as digital preservation for existing digital collections.

Collections will be accepted depending on available funding in response to our current fundraising efforts. If your organization has its own funding to pursue a digitization project with California Revealed, please let us know - we’d like to work with you to expand public access and discovery of your local history!

🌐 Learn more about our digitization and preservation support: californiarevealed.org/digitize-and-preserve

💌Submission deadline and first review of responses: September 30, 2025

Questions welcome! Email us: [email protected]

08/12/2026

It’s tomato season in California! 🍅

Did you know that California produces over 95% of the nation's processing tomatoes?

To celebrate this summer harvest, we are throwing it back with archival footage from our State of California Employment Development Department collection. Filmed before 1969, this 16mm color film captures the specialized labor and detailed process of sorting tomatoes in the Golden State.

Special thanks to California Revealed for helping us digitize and preserve this film!

08/12/2026

The sun still shines! Our Summer Newsletter is here! ☀️🎞️

This issue’s Partner Spotlight highlights the Mineral King Historical Society and the labor of Jean Koch, whose care and commitment helped make this history available to others.
In that same spirit, we bring together materials from across our network: footage from Mineral King (1951), a silent color film by Ed Mannion provided by our partner, Petaluma Museum Historical Library & Museum, set to this issue’s Now Playing highlight, Don Ellis “live” at Magic Mountain, Summer 1973, from the UCLA Ethnomusicology Archive. Together, these collections remind us of the many hands that carry our histories forward.

Inside the newsletter, you’ll find our next Call for Collections, advocacy updates, upcoming events, and preservation resources. Pending State Library budget approval, we have a small amount of funding available for our services. We're also available for hire if your organization has its own funding to pursue a digitization or digital preservation project.

Let's continue to preserve, share, and build histories together. 🌲✨

05/08/2026

⏰ Legacy File Request Form closes soon❗

California Revealed partners may request copies of their digital collections on californiarevealed.org through our Legacy File Request Form. Hard drives and necessary shipping costs will be covered!

🔗 The form will remain open until May 31, 2026. We will fulfill all requests submitted before this deadline in the order they are received. Form: https://airtable.com/appsxcjsOigOIxUcG/pagg6s8tneQs2ZzdR/form

The California Revealed Digital Repository (californiarevealed.org) is both an online access platform and a collection of digital objects (including preservation masters, access copies, thumbnails of the original, and metadata) stored offline on Linear Tape Open (LTO) data tape in two geographically separate locations. Thanks to the Groundwork Grants program, administered by the California State Library in partnership with Myriad Consulting and Training, we are offering partner organizations backup copies of their "legacy" files from previous grant cycles (before 2024/2025). For more information, visit the Digital Preservation Planning page: https://californiarevealed.org/digitalpreservationplanning

Who can request digital files?
If your organization has ever digitized materials with California Revealed and/or hosted your digital collections on californiarevealed.org.

What if we want to request legacy files after the deadline?
Support for file requests is generously funded by the Groundwork Grants program, administered by the California State Library in partnership with Myriad Consulting, which ends June 30, 2026. All partners are welcome to request copies of their digital files at any point in the future, though delivery and hardware costs may not be covered.

04/13/2026

ALA Free Webinars | Hand in Hand: Connecting, Supporting, and Sustaining California Memory Labs

Join us Thursday, April 30, 11 AM (PT) / 2 PM (ET) for a conversation on California-based Memory Labs through public libraries and beyond. Thanks to ALA's Core: Leadership, Infrastructure, Futures Team for presenting this free, public webinar.

Registration is open! Visit https://preservationweek.org/free-webinars/memory-labs/

About the Webinar:
Who gets to preserve their memories? Who gets to contribute to community history? Photographs, videotapes, old concert tickets… memories come in all forms, and when shared, build community and become a part of our living history. Memory labs provide the opportunity to digitize people’s materials and preserve individual, familial, and collective memory in service of the historical record.

The California Memory Lab Network includes over 25 public libraries, in addition to a growing network of community-based organizations leading preservation initiatives. This webinar will introduce the Memory Lab model, highlight California Revealed’s pilot program to build new community-based archives through their public library partnerships, and offer resources to reinforce the national network, including a new California Memory Lab Handbook, as well as digitization kits. We will highlight the work of the South Pasadena Public Library, who are exploring options to make their Memory Lab more ADA-friendly.

While we will not sugarcoat challenges (such as sustainability and network building), we believe participants bring so much love, appreciation, and understanding of the revolutionary applicability and flexibility of the model that the webinar will be positive, uplifting, and in many ways liberating. We hope this discussion will inspire folks interested in starting up a memory lab or seeking advice for maintaining one.

03/20/2026

🔄 Are you wanting to start a digitization project but don’t know where to begin? What does “digital readiness” mean? And how are you going to store all of those big files?

Bring your questions and join us for a free digital preservation training webinar series to help your organization care for and maintain long-term access to its digital collections. All webinars will be at noon and open to all!

💾 Tuesday March 31
Digital Preservation Models and Policies

💾 Tuesday April 14
Prepare for Digitization: Identifying, Assessing, and Prioritizing

💾 Tuesday April 28
Digital Storage 101

💾 Tuesday May 5
Digital Collection Development, Outreach, and Programming

RSVP to attend any webinar: https://airtable.com/appsxcjsOigOIxUcG/pagg6s8tneQs2ZzdR/form

Questions? Visit californiarevealed.org/digitalpreservationplanning or contact us at [email protected].

02/27/2026

As funeral services begin for Jesse Jackson, we’re sharing this 1992 conversation he gave in Little Tokyo, recorded during another difficult chapter in our nation’s history. In it, he names the distance between America’s promises and its practice and calls on us to close that gap together. More than three decades later, his words still ring true. They remind us that democracy is not self-executing. It requires courage, coalition, and care.

Preserving moments like this is part of that work. We share this clip in gratitude for Reverend Jesse Jackson’s life of service and in commitment to the ongoing work of building a country that lives up to its promise. Many thanks to Visual Communications for their partnership to digitize and make this publicly available online.

Transcript: “Racism is disturbing emotionally and psychologically. It drives the believer insane. Racism is divisive politically. As manifest in our country, in South Africa, and around the world. Racism is exploitative economically. Racism is a form of idolatry, a form of skin worship. It's the religion. It's a body of beliefs. It's a behavior. That deteriorates the human soul and does violence to the human spirit. Racism is a sin. It is ungodly theology. Racism assumes that God is unfair, that God is biased toward the creatures of the creation. It is an assumption on the logic that God made a creative error when they made the other groups. We must resist this virus because it's ungodly. Taken to its logical conclusion in World War II, 56 million people were killed. Racism unleashed, fatal fascism unleashed. Fifty-six million people. It's the [brothers] who break the bad. But because it's taught and embraced by our institutions, those who are victims of it and who care about it must coalesce and fight it because it threatens our existence. Ignorance may be bliss, but it's also dangerous and expensive. Ignorance is like darkness. There will be this awesome sense of fear. Any movements are threatening movements. In a handclap, it sounds like gunfire. There's just a get-low, awesome sense of fear, laid by voice, ruled by the thieves of the night. But one candle lit will challenge the whole room of the darkness. From the furthest corner, we could see the one lit candle. Light is a threat to darkness. It's a cure for our fears. Intelligence is a threat to ignorance. And so we must fight ignorance with intelligence, with information. Fight darkness with life. Fight indifference with caring. Fight cowardice for courage. Unlearn your fears. Find discomfort in separation and comfort in reconciliation. Teach the real world over.” –Reverend Jesse Jackson

02/14/2026

Feliz día de San Valentín / Happy Valentine's Day 💘

🕊 El Refugio 03 (1972/1975)

Love as embrace, care, and admiration for the world around us and the lives we share it with. This collaborative piece by Carlos Bueno and Antonio Ibáñez is an early testament to their longtime partnership and the foundation of Self Help Graphics and Art (SHG). Bueno and Ibáñez often integrated their names directly into the artwork, as seen in the penciled inscription along the bottom.

As one of America's most recognized Latino printmaking centers, SHG is committed to innovative approaches, working with artists in traditional and non-traditional printmaking processes to develop culturally relevant, responsive, and investigative content. SHG has published more than 2,200 serigraphs and themed Ateliers (portfolios), representing diverse local and international communities.

♥ View the print online: https://californiarevealed.org/do/d5946926-fffe-4c06-96ae-b8e14f85603b /1

02/11/2026

✏️ These handwritten memory cards were created by community members during the Black Panther Party History Workshop, part of Commons Archive public programming held at the Golden Gate Library in Oakland in 2018. Written in the moment, they reflect how the Black Panther Party shaped people’s everyday lives in California.

Participants were asked one question: “How have you been touched by the Black Panther Party?” Their responses speak to community care, political education, food programs, and collective responsibility, illustrating how the Party’s work extended far beyond protest and continues to influence how communities organize, support one another, and imagine justice.

These reflections show how the legacy of the Black Panther Party remains present today. The ideas documented here—mutual aid, self-determination, and caring for one another—are not historical artifacts but living practices carried forward across generations. View the entire Memory Card series: https://bit.ly/BlackPantherPartyHistoryWorkshopwithCommonsArchive

California Revealed is committed to preserving community-rooted histories like these because documenting the past also helps us understand the present and build a better future. In moments of uncertainty and distortion, archives remain a place where memory, accountability, and collective knowledge are held with care.