Program Initiatives

LAFFEY ARCHIVES has undertaken a number of initiatives in support of its mission-to preserve the records of he built environment. Below are some examples of prior and ongoing projects:

Networking. As an advocate for local archives, we hosted the opening reception of the Santa Clara County Archives.

California Room. We support the California Room of the San Jose Pubic Library at the Martin Luther King, Jr. main library. Donations include the 4-volume Dorothy Mutnick Spanish/Mexican Genealogy collection and the 1909 Block Book digitization project. a Recent donation was a three volume set of San Jose Sanborn maps, which we helped facilitate via a donation from Beth Wyman. Past projects have included Glory Anne Laffey's reverse 1870 directory of San Jose.

Historic Preservation literature. The Archives funded the acquisition of a full set of National Trust and California Preservation Foundation literature for use by local preservation groups, and has built a repository of Trust magazines for reference use.

CRM Report Archives. Currently in storage, the Archives has the largest collection of local Cultural Resource Management reports in Northern California outside of the Northwest Information Center of Rohnert Park, Sonoma State University. We plan to digitize and make these available online.

Sourisseau Academy for State and Local History. Support for this organization affiliated with San Jose State University has included funds for photo and ephemera acquisitions, and support for the 1850 census project begun by the late Edith Smith, Archivist.

Historic Architecture Lecture Series. Eighteen lectures have been recorded and are being prepared for online access. The series will continue in late 2015.

Secondary Resources. The Archives has acquired via donations a large collection of local history books. A portion has been donated to the Santa Clara County Archives for reference use by their patrons. Duplicate copies are available for purchase from www.nreverse.com. We accept donations and are providing this resale venue as a means of fundraising for other Archives projects.

Building local historic resources inventories. The Getty and World Monuments Fund project called Arches has recently released version 3.0 of their Heritage Inventory & Management System. Arches is an open source software system that incorporates international standards and is built to inventory and help manage all types of immovable cultural heritage. With this release is version 1.0 of their Heritage Inventory Package. First utilized in SurveyLA, the Laffey Archives is in preliminary planning to implement this inventory system in the South Bay area. We are seeking funding and support to implement the web based software package and begin program planning.