Skip to main content
LibApps staff login

Anti-Bias Anti-Racism Anti-Asian/Asian American

Archival Collections

Collection of Asian American resources including visual and textual material from archival institutions, museums, libraries, and historical societies. 

Asian American Archival Collections

 

AAA, Archives of American Arts from the Smithsonian Institution preserves dissertations, exhibitions, catalogs, articles, and books on American art and artists to document the history of the visual arts in America. Under Explore the Collection, type “Asian American” in the Search Collections box.


Archive Finder access to over millions of archival materials across the United States. ArchiveGrid provides at least 9,000 archival materials on Asian American.  

The Asian American Film Ephemera Collection at the Harvard Film Archive features 175 films made by various Asian artists in the United States, France, Italy, United Kingdom, and Hong Kong.

 Asian/Pacific/American Institute and the Tamiment Library & Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives at New York University developed the Asian/Pacific/American Archives Survey Project. The collection preserves various visual resources including correspondences, posters, photographs, and other memorabilia of East Coast Asian Americans. The Project emphasizes community archives by representing the Asian Americans in the East Coast. 

The University of California, Berkeley (UCB) students developed the Berkley Revolutionary Project, a digital archive that preserves visual resources about the history of Oakland and Berkley, California in the 1960's-1970's. The Project page features the Asian Community Library, which showcases a pivotal era in Oakland during the mid-1970’s. Furthermore, the Asian Community Library is a collection that provides historical background on Judy Yung.  As the Head Librarian of the Asian Branch of the Oakland Public Library, Judy Yung became the first Asian American librarian. Yung’s activism and responsibilities as the Head Librarian gained prestige when the Asian Branch of the Oakland Public Library was acknowledged as the first Pan-Asian public library in the United States.


The CaliSphere Digital Library curated by the University of California showcases all ten campuses along with many archives, libraries, and museums' archival collections. The California Cultures: Asian Americans Collection available in the Calisphere Digital Library provides rich visual resources including photographs, diaries, films, etc. on Asian American history in California. 

The Cantor Arts Center, located on the Stanford University Campus, features a collection of Auguste Rodin’s sculpture as well as permanent collections of artworks by Martin Wong and Isamu Noguchi.


The Center for Asian American Media (CAAM) Collection at the American Archive of Public Broadcasting preserves more than 20 films on Asian experiences. According to the website, the collection includes, “early broadcasts by the ground-breaking Asian American anthology series ‘Silk Screen' (1982-1987), which explores the subject of identity and treatment of Asian Americans in the San Francisco Bay Area.”
 
The Library of Congress Asian American and Pacific Islander Collection (AAPI) includes archival resources including photographs, moving images, correspondences, oral history interviews, and other relics on various topics discussed in Asian American studies including assimilation, education, exclusion laws, immigration, and history. 


The Immigrant Voices website is a digital collection at the Angel Island Immigration Station in Angel Island, San Francisco. The online collection preserves stories of Asian immigrants' lives and personal experiences in Northern California. 

 Smithsonian “Under the umbrella of the Smithsonian Institution, several branches feature Asian American artists. Search the National Portrait Gallery, the Smithsonian American Art Museum…and the Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum", which feature a permanent collection of modern and contemporary Asian American artists including Yayoi Kusama, Isamu Noguchi, Roger Shimomura, and Nam Jun Pak. 

The Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center (APAC) exhibits various Asian Pacific American experiences and lives through arts and visual media.

This VAAM website brings together a specially curated group of artistic works from numerous vital cultural institutions, including the Asian/Pacific/American Institute at NYU, NYU Libraries, Getty Research Institute, Smithsonian Institution, Bowdoin Art Museum, San Francisco State University, DePaul University, Tome, Artl@s/BasART, and the Japanese American Service Committee in ChicagoThese renowned cultural institutions feature many artworks and audio materials by Asian Americans artists, as well as peer-reviewed narratives on Asian American art, history, and culture.


The Zinn Project Includes more than 20 archival collections of Asian American activists including Yuri Kochiyama. 

 

The ASU Library acknowledges the twenty-three Native Nations that have inhabited this land for centuries. Arizona State University's four campuses are located in the Salt River Valley on ancestral territories of Indigenous peoples, including the Akimel O’odham (Pima) and Pee Posh (Maricopa) Indian Communities, whose care and keeping of these lands allows us to be here today. ASU Library acknowledges the sovereignty of these nations and seeks to foster an environment of success and possibility for Native American students and patrons. We are advocates for the incorporation of Indigenous knowledge systems and research methodologies within contemporary library practice. ASU Library welcomes members of the Akimel O’odham and Pee Posh, and all Native nations to the Library.