In the digital age, a major research university must not only expand its own collections of primary materials, but also extend the availability of such materials worldwide through the Internet. To address this goal, the research center has provided this Web site (www.usc.edu/arc) that will serve as a central access point to hundreds of archives owned and housed at other libraries, museums and institutions throughout the region. The site also includes a comprehensive list of archival materials relating to Southern California that are housed at USC. Three growing resources, all linked to the USC research center, provide increasing access to original and secondary resources related to Los Angeles and Southern California. The first of these is the Los Angeles as Subject resource, a directory of nearly 200 archival resources that grew out of a Getty Research Institute project in which USC was a partner institution. The database was relocated to USC from the Getty in 2000 and will continue to grow as additional repositories are added and as the depth of information about each repository increases.

The second resource, the Los Angeles Comprehensive Bibliographic Database (LACBD), is an integrated version of the two leading bibliographies of resources related to Los Angeles. The 1973 Los Angeles and Its Environs in the Twentieth Century: A Bibliography of a Metropolis, by USC Distinguished Professor Emeritus Doyce Nunis, along with its 1996 sequel, edited by Los Angeles City Archivist Hynda Rudd, are the most comprehensive and useful print bibliographies yet assembled for the study of Los Angeles. In partnership with the Los Angeles City Historical Society, USC has brought these two volumes together in one Web-accessible edition of approximately 15,000 titles.

The third resource - the Digital Archive - provides access to digital images of photographs, maps, manuscripts, records, texts and a growing number of other objects in USC and its partners' collections, with a particular emphasis on materials related to Southern California. Nearly 70,000 objects exist in the Digital Archive at present, and approximately 8,000 of these, mostly photographs, are currently available to the public. New collections are being added continuously, the most recent being El Clamor Publico, a historic Southern California newspaper, published in Los Angeles between 1855 and 1859. 

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