Systems: We Created Our Own

Early library staff were mostly work study students without backgrounds in library science or experience running a library. However, they quickly understood that standardized library descriptive, classification and access systems weren’t going to work for their growing collection or their communities. They needed their own intellectual infrastructure for information retrieval. All of the resources they worked hard to collect would mean little if they could be found only through racist or stereotyped frameworks. Library staff refused to use those systems and instead created their own.

Jose Antonio Arce is credited with having conceived of the Chicano Classification System, a modification of the Library of Congress Classification system that aimed to center a Chicana/o/x worldview. Arce consulted with librarians in the main Berkeley campus library system in order to devise a way to organize the Chicano Studies Library and worked with CSL student workers such as Elva Yañez to realize his vision. In 1974 he released the Chicano Classification system. It is an important part of the story of the library itself and is used to organize the Chicano Studies Collection within the Ethnic Studies Library today.

The Chicano Movement of the late 60s and 70s produced an explosion of political, literary, artistic, and intellectual literature. Chicana/o/x librarians desperately needed an index so that they could point students to articles for research, affirmation of their identities or political organizing. Mainstream reference tools did not include or even acknowledge Chicano literature, perpetuating the falsehood that there was no history of Chicano literature. In 1978, the Chicano Periodical Indexing Project brought together a group of fourteen librarians across seven institutions. They indexed 18 periodicals such as Agenda, Atisbos, Aztlán, Caracol, Chicano Law Review, Con Safos, De Colores, Encuentro, El Grito, Grito del Sol, Journal of Mexican American History, The Journal of Mexican American Studies and Somos. The first edition of the Chicano Periodical Index (CPI) was published in 1981 by G.K. Hall. The thick, beautifully bound green volume included 24,000 entries and is the manifestation of many hours, hands and hearts that devoted their time as volunteers to bring the index to life.

As plans for the Chicano Periodical Index developed, it became clear that a dedicated set of controlled terms was needed to describe the contents of the articles. The Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH), a standardized list of terms used by libraries around the world included terms that were demeaning as well as inaccurate, such as “Illegal Aliens.” The LCSH also lacked specific terms for concepts that were part of the Chicana/o/x worldview, some of which are best expressed in Spanish. The project to create the Chicano Thesaurus ran in parallel to the creation of the Chicano Periodical Index and was first published in 1979.

In 1984, Lillian Castillo-Speed became Coordinator of the Chicano Studies Library. Castillo-Speed continued to develop the Chicano Periodical Index and Chicano Thesaurus in collaboration with Chabrán and García-Ayvens who continued to contribute to these projects after leaving the Chicano Studies Library. Working with this team, Castillo-Speed led The Chicano Periodical Index and Chicano Thesaurus through many technological transitions. The first edition of the Chicano Periodical Index had been produced using an outside company’s computer system. Soon afterwards, García-Ayvens purchased the AlphaMicro 1000, a then state-of-the-art computing system, so that the entire process was within the control of library staff. Castillo-Speed moved the projects away from an outdated BASIC system and then worked closely with programmers to migrate the index and thesaurus to CD-ROM, Windows based systems and later to an open-source web content management system to create the Chicano Database, now available online. In 1990, the Chicano Thesaurus was assigned a unique source code by the Library of Congress making it easier for other libraries to use Chicano Thesaurus terms.

The library also created its own publishing unit. Since the main UC library system did not list the CSL’s holdings in its catalog, the CSL made a practice of publishing a list of recent additions to their collections in order to increase discoverability. In a move that would prove key to the unit’s later success, early library staff had the foresight to microfilm the library’s unique collection of Chicano newspapers. As other libraries began collecting Chicana/o/x materials, the newspapers were in demand but often no longer available. The Chicano Studies Library was able to meet the needs of other libraries by selling the microfilmed newspapers. The funds generated from these sales enabled the library to expand its publishing unit and pursue publishing projects such as the Chicano Anthology Index, the Bibliography of Writings on La Mujer, the Chicana Studies Index, and Arte Chicano. Each of these publications was the first of its kind. They could only be created with the Chicano Studies Library’s collections, its reputation among scholars, and the fact that it had its own funding to pay for printing costs. The Publications Unit team of the 1980s was small but highly talented. Publications Coordinator Carolyn Soto brought her design expertise, while then Coordinator and Publications Editor Francisco García-Ayvens brought his sharp editorial eye. When G.K. Hall discontinued publishing the index as soon as it failed to generate revenue, the library took over and continued to publish the print editions, the CD-ROM versions and to license the Chicano Database.