Library Guides: Asian American and Asian Diaspora Studies: Digital Archives & Oral History Collections

Asian American Studies Digital Archives and Websites (Alphabetical)

AAPI Community COVID Archival Project
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We are living through a historical event which has not occurred for more than 100 years. We are also living in a time when data is fast and research quickly disseminated, yet there is a paucity of research data about Asian American Pacific Islander people and in what little there is, the human behind the data is lost through summary statistics. There is no collection of individual reflections for what is happening to us as Asian American Pacific Islander people. Lacking a voice, history is written for us. Words are put into our mouths as mainstream institutions write about the Asians American and Pacific Islander communities as a monolith. By building a platform that will give us a voice to speak for ourselves, the collective experiences we’ve cherished and endured during this pandemic will be valuable lessons for future generations. Our stories will also help to fill the void left by the failure of institutions to include meaningful reflections about AAPI individuals during this pandemic.
AAPI COVID-19 Project (Harvard University)
The AAPI COVID-19 Project is a collective research project bringing together faculty, graduate researchers, and undergraduate research assistants at seven academic institutions in the United States. Our project explores multiple layers of harm connected to the pandemic — the virus itself and the intensification of racism and xenophobia that A/AAs & NHPIs have endured in its wake.
Asian American Art Oral History Project (DePaul University)
Founded in 2009, this ongoing student conducted project led by Laura Kina, Professor in The Art School, is dedicated to collecting oral histories of Asian/Asian American artists and key organizers and participants of Asian/Asian American arts and cultural organizations. While the scope of the project encompasses diasporic and US born Asians across the United States, the primary focus of the archive is to document the history of Midwestern Asian American artists and arts organizations.
Asian American Movement 1968
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This website features the Asian American Movement 40th Anniversary collection from the archives of the Asian Community Center (once located on Kearny St. in San Francisco). The collection focuses on 1968 because that year was the beginning point for the Asian American movement. 1968 witnessed world changing events and many Asian Americans responded to make the world a better place for humanity. This project is sponsored by the Asian Community Center History Group.
Auntie Sewing Squad Oral HIstory Project
This oral history archive derives from a genealogy of community-based oral history projects that aims to redress the historical absence of women’s lives from archival collections. Throughout CSUMB’s first fully online semester, SBS 112 students worked with oral history archives that centered women's voices during significant historical events, including the Federal Writers Project in the New Deal, the WWII Rosie the Riveter Archive, and the Chicana Feminism Oral History Project. This class emphasizes student-led oral histories and takes its cue from Grace Yoo’s first class on the Auntie Sewing Squad at San Francisco State University. Oral histories provide opportunities for students to drive the interview and Aunties to pass on their stories. Students created an archive dedicated to the histories and activism of the Auntie Sewing Squad during Covid-19.
Beginnings of Activism for the Department of Asian American Studies (BADAAS) at University of California, Irvine collection
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This collection consists of 21 oral histories from the Beginnings of Activism for the Department of Asian American Studies (BADAAS) at University of California, Irvine project. BADAAS was a group created by the chair of the Department of Asian American Studies, Dr. Judy Wu, and Dr. Thuy Vo Dang, director of the Southeast Asian Archive for the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Department of Asian American Studies. They assembled a group of interns to research the history of the creation of Asian American Studies on campus and conducted oral histories with the professors, staff and faculty members, activists, and former students involved its foundation.
The Berkeley Revolution Digital Archive
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This website is a collective project, one which emerged from an honors undergraduate seminar in American Studies at UC-Berkeley, “The Bay Area in the Seventies,” taught by Scott Saul in the spring of 2017. The eleven students in that seminar shaped their own research projects, burrowing into archives official and unofficial so as to recover the stories missing from, or hidden within, standard accounts of Berkeley’s history.
Calisphere: Asian Americans
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An exhibit of Asian American-related material on Calisphere. Calisphere provides free access to unique and historically important artifacts for research, teaching, and curious exploration. Discover over two million photographs, documents, letters, artwork, diaries, oral histories, films, advertisements, musical recordings, and more.
Center for Lao Studies
This project, the first of its kind, will document the untold stories of Lao refugees in the US through audio and video media and create an on-line archive of interviews, videos, and historical documents. Currently, there are almost no existing oral history projects and little academic research that focus on the ethnic Lao refugees in the US. By creating a Lao Oral History archive, CLS aims to raise awareness within the Lao-American community and the greater population of the history, culture, and contemporary realities of Lao refugees in the US as well as the Central Intelligence Agencys (CIA) Secret War in Laos in the 1960s and 70s. This project will disseminate the voices of underrepresented population, whose stories of immigration reflect unique moments in both Lao and American history, thereby building bridges between the past and present and between disparate cultures.
Chinese Canadian Stories
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These digitized collections consist of materials that document Chinese Canadian history represented in the holdings of UBC Library, SFU Library, City of Vancouver Archives, Community Historical Recognition Program (CHRP) community partners, and other community contributors. The collections contain digitized photographs, audio/video recordings, manuscripts (including correspondence and diaries), newspapers and other publications. The digital collections can be searched individually or all at once. To conduct a search, enter keywords, place names, personal names, or dates using our Search function. You can also Browse the collections individually.
Chinese Workers Mutual Aid Association Records on the Internet Archive
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Digitized Federal Bureau of Investigation File on the Chinese Workesr Mutual Aid Association.
Densho: The Japanese American Legacy Project
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Densho is a nonprofit organization started in 1996, with the initial goal of documenting oral histories from Japanese Americans who were incarcerated during World War II. This evolved into a mission to educate, preserve, collaborate and inspire action for equity. Densho uses digital technology to preserve and make accessible primary source materials on the World War II incarceration of Japanese Americans. We present these materials and related resources for their historic value and as a means of exploring issues of democracy, intolerance, wartime hysteria, civil rights and the responsibilities of citizenship in our increasingly global society.
FoundSF: San Francisco's Digital Archive
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FoundSF is a wiki that invites history buffs, community leaders, and San Francisco citizens of all kinds to share their unique stories, images, and videos from past and present. There are over 1,800 articles here presenting primary sources, essays, and images from history.
Hmongstory 40
The year 2015 marked 40 years of the Hmong migration from Laos and Thailand to the United States of America. To commemorate this special anniversary, an exhibition comprised of photographs, stories, fine art, and artifacts was create to showcase the Hmong experience.
Hmongstory 40 is a joint effort from many people from throughout the state of California. It represents a collaborative that shares a common vision. This exhibition provides a rare and intimate opportunity to connect with the Hmong people. From the past to the present, Hmongstory 40 constructed a narrative that was absent within the Hmong community and to the general public at large.
Hoji Shinbun Digital Collection: Japanese Diaspora Initiative, Hoover Institution Library & Archives, Stanford University
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The Hoji Shinbun Digital Collection is currently the world’s largest online archive of open-access, full‑image Japanese American and other overseas Japanese newspapers. All image content in this collection has enhancements added where possible, thus rendering the text maximally searchable. The holdings of each title are also browsable by date, with each title cross searchable with other titles on the platform. This collection is planned to contain some sixty newspapers published in Hawaii and North America. Most publications present a mix of content in Japanese and English, with formats and the proportionality of Japanese/English often changing as a reflection of shifting business and social circumstances.
Immigrant Stories (University of Minnesota)
Immigrant Stories helps people tell, share, and preserve personal and family immigration stories. Use this website and create a digital story: a 3-5 minute video made from your own photos, text, and audio.
Korean American Digital Archive, University of Southern California
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The Korean American Digital Archive brings more than 13,000 pages of documents, over 1,900 photographs, and about 180 sound files together in one searchable collection that documents the Korean American community during the period of resistance to Japanese rule in Korea and reveal the organizational and private experience of Koreans in America between 1903 and 1965.
No-No Boy: A Snapshot of the Archive
Created by Tara Fickle, this site contains snapshots of archives associated with Aiiieeeee: An Anthology of Asian American Writers third edition published in 2021.
An Other War Memorial: Memories of the American War in Viet Nam
How do nations remember wars? Usually nations remember their own soldiers and citizens, and usually nations will build memorials to those who have died fighting their wars. But memorials help us to forget as much as they help us to remember. An Other War Memorial questions why nations should remember only their own, and why soldiers are the ones recalled in memorials. The war commemorated here is what some call the Vietnam War and what some call the American War. The people commemorated here are both the living and the dead, soldiers and civilians. Visitors can begin by clicking on a portrait to see the profile of someone who died in the war, survived the war, witnessed the war, or protested against it.
Pioneering Punjabis Digital Archive, Unversity of California, Davis
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This archive offers a window into the story of South Asian immigrants from the Punjab region in north India to California since the turn of the twentieth century. Explore over 700 video interviews, speeches, diaries, photographs, articles, and letters in which Punjabi Americans share their life stories, values, and contributions to California’s history over the last hundred and twenty years.
Resources for Researching: Historical Directories
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Business directories published by Wells Fargo offer important resources for researchers and family historians. In particular, several Chinese business directories from the 19th century have been digitized and are available here.
Sacramento COVID-19 Asian American Oral History Project
This project documents the experiences of the Asian Americans during the Covid-19 pandemic in the Sacramento region and beyond. Students in Asian American Communities, ETHN 113, identified and conducted oral histories with members of the Asian American community about their experiences during the Covid-19 pandemic. Topics include balancing work and employment during the pandemic, the rise in anti-Asian hate, the experiences of frontline workers, and how the social disruptions of the pandemic were connected to race and racialization. This community history project is overseen by Dr. William Gow.
Seattle Civil Rights and Labor History Project, University of Washington
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This multi-media web site brings the vital history of Seattle's civil rights movements to life with scores of video oral histories, hundreds of rare photographs, documents, movement histories, and personal biographies, more than 300 pages in all. Based at the University of Washington, the Seattle Civil Rights and Labor History Project is a collaboration between community groups and UW faculty and students.
South Asian American Digital Archive
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SAADA creates a more inclusive society by giving voice to South Asian Americans through documenting, preserving, and sharing stories that represent their unique and diverse experiences.
Southeast Asian Archive, University of California, Irvine
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Since the end of the Vietnam Conflict in 1975 a large number of refugees and immigrants from Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam have come to the United States, and especially to California. In order to document their experiences in a new culture, the UC Irvine Libraries established the Southeast Asian Archive in 1987. The Archive's collection is broad and interdisciplinary in documenting the social, cultural, religious, political, and economic life of Americans of Southeast Asian origin. Strengths include materials relating to the resettlement of Southeast Asian refugees and immigrants in the United States, refugee camp and other experiences of the "boat people" and land refugees, and the development and progress of new ethnic communities. There is a special focus on materials pertaining to Southeast Asian Americans in Orange County and California.
Vietnamese American Heritage Foundation (VAHF) Interviews, Rice University
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This collection consists of video interviews dating from 2011 and conducted by the Vietnamese American Heritage Foundation. These interviewees are Texas-based, and form part of the national 500 Oral Histories Project conducted by the Vietnamese Heritage Foundation. These interviews are online at https://scholarship.rice.edu/handle/1911/79696. Most are in Vietnamese, although some are in English. The collection guide can be found at https://legacy.lib.utexas.edu/taro/ricewrc/00865/rice-00865.html.
Viet Stories: Vietnamese American Oral History Project, University of California, Irvine
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Viet Stories: Vietnamese American Oral History Project at the University of California, Irvine actively assembles, preserves, and disseminates the life stories of Vietnamese Americans in Southern California. The project contributes to expanding archives on Vietnamese Americans with the primary goal of capturing first-generation stories for students, researchers, and the community. Launched in 2011, VAOHP is housed in the Department of Asian American Studies in the School of Humanities and collaborates with the UCI Libraries Southeast Asian Archive.
Watsonville is in the Heart: A Community Archive and Research Initiative
The Watsonville is in the Heart digital archive preserves and uplifts the stories of the “manong” generation (Ilokano/Tagalog for "older brother"), the first wave of Filipino migrant farmworkers to arrive in the United States at the beginning of the 20th century. Focused on the pioneering families of Watsonville and the greater Pajaro Valley, the archive enshrines the manongs’ and their descendents’ memories of migration, labor, leisure, and community formation. The digital archive includes oral histories, family photographs, family heirlooms, letters and correspondences, and newspaper clippings.
Welga Project Digital Archive and Repository (UC Davis Bulosan Center)
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The Welga Project Digital Archive and Repository focuses on preserving and presenting primary sources regarding the Filipino American Labor and Activism History. Currently, most our collections focus on mid-20th century labor history. From 2017 forward, we are committed to expanding our collection to include the broad topic of Filipino American activism and labor history.

UC Berkeley Library Databases

Calisphere This link opens in a new window
Digitized images including photographs, documents, newspaper pages, political cartoons, works of art, diaries, transcribed oral histories, advertising, and other unique cultural artifacts that reveal the diverse history and culture of California and its role in national and world history.
Gateway to digitized images from the libraries and museums of the University of California campuses, cultural heritage organizations in California, and UC-created websites and collections.
FBI Confidential Files and Radical Politics in the U.S., 1945-1972 This link opens in a new window
Contains the records of the FBI and the Subversive Activities Control Board investigating “subversive” activities.
This ProQuest History Vault module contains J. Edgar Hoover's office files; documentation on the FBI's so-called "black bag jobs," as they were called before being renamed "surreptitious entries"; and the "Do Not File" File. The "Do Not File" file consists of records that were originally supposed to be destroyed on FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover's order, however large portions of these files survived. Another key collection in this module consists of the records of the Subversive Activities Control Board (SACB). The SACB files is one of the most valuable resources for the study of left-wing radicalism during the 1950s and 1960s. [1945-1972]
Japanese American Relocation Camp Newspapers This link opens in a new window
Searchable full text database of 25 newspapers written and produced by Japanese Americans interned during World War II.
"Although subject to censorship the newspapers document the day to day life of the internees. Titles includes: Rohwer Outpost, Poston Chronicle, Gila News Courier, Tulean Dispatch, Granada Pioneer, Minndoka Irrigator, Topaz Times, Manzanar Free Press, Denson Tribune, and Heart Mountain Sentinel. (1942-1945)"
Migration to New Worlds This link opens in a new window
Explores the movement of peoples from Great Britain, Ireland, mainland Europe and Asia to the New World and Australasia. [1800-1980]
Unique primary source diaries, correspondence, photographs, oral histories and journals narrate the vivid realities of ocean travel and life in adopted homelands. Organisational correspondence, government proceedings, shipping company papers and records of advocacy groups provide key context to migrants’ everyday struggles.
Personal Justice Denied: Public Hearings of the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment This link opens in a new window
Testimony and documents from more than 750 individuals involved in the Japanese American Internment during World War II.
"Includes material from more than 750 Japanese-Americans and Aleuts who had lived through the events of World War II, as well as government officials who ran the internment program, public figures, organizations such as the Japanese American Citizens League, interested citizens, historians, and other professionals who had studied the internment. Documents include personal stories, publications, reports, press releases, photographs, newspaper clippings, etc. (1981, principally covers 1942 - 1945)"
Rafu Shimpo Digital Archive This link opens in a new window
Rafu Shimpo began in 1903 and is the longest running Japanese American newspaper in the U. S. During WWII, it was suspended from 1942-1945, and was revived in 1946. The digital archive contains all obtainable issues from 1914 through 2018.

Japanese American Relocation Digital Archive, Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley
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The Japanese American Relocation Digital Archives (JARDA) contains thousands of primary sources documenting Japanese American internment.
Library of Congress Digital Collections
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Access the digital collections of the Library of Congress.
My China Roots
Off campus access via VPN only. My China Roots is a family history database for the Chinese diaspora that includes millions of searchable ancestors in America and Southeast Asia. The database includes thousands of clan books (zupus), immigration registers, burial and obituary records, and overseas Chinese business directories and association records. Surnames or village names are searchable. Most Chinese documents are full-text viewable online.
San Francisco Chinese Community and Earthquake Damage, ca. 1906
he San Francisco Chinese Community and Earthquake Damage album contains 223 photographic prints taken circa 1906.

Ethnic Studies Library Digital Collections

The Ethnic Studies Library has a growing number of digital collections publicly accessible. In Asian American and Asian Diaspora Studies, we have the following digital collections available.

Calisphere:

Chung Sai Yat Po Newspaper (1900-1905) - See issues of Chung Sai Yat Po from 1900-1905 on Calisphere. Additional years are available on microfilm at the UC Berkeley Ethnic Studies Library and the UC Berkeley East Asian Library.
Asian American Political Alliance Oral History Project - The mission of the Asian American Political Alliance Oral History Project is to document the history of the Asian American Political Alliance (AAPA) at UC Berkeley. AAPA was formed in 1968 and its two main chapters were at UC Berkeley, formed by Yuji Ichioka and Emma Gee, and at San Francisco State College by Penny Nakatsu and others. AAPA was an anti-imperialist, anti-capitalist, Third World political organization that fought for self-determination and liberation for Asian Americans and emphasized solidarity with Third World peoples in the United States and around the world. Ichioka and Gee were also the co-creators of the term “Asian American” which replaced the term “Oriental” and brought individuals of different Asian backgrounds under a pan-Asian identity for the first time. At both UC Berkeley and San Francisco State, AAPA was a major force in the Third World Liberation Front coalition which joined African American, Asian American, Chicanx, and Native American students in the struggle for Ethnic Studies. Individuals who were involved in AAPA were involved in other struggles for liberation and justice including the KDP, anti-Vietnam War organizing, the Black Panthers, United Farmworkers, and other formations.

Internet Archive:

H.K. Yuen Social Movement Archive - Audio recordings of Berkeley and Bay Area social movements including the Third World Liberation Front student strike. Digitized recordings are available on the Internet Archive thanks to our collaboration with California Revealed and a CLIR Recordings at Risk grant.
Sut Yung Ying Yee - Sut Yung Ying Yee was a bilingual Chinese and English TV-series co-produced by the Chinese Media Committee of Chinese for Affirmative Action and KPIX-TV Westinghouse in 1971 and aired starting in 1971 on KPIX Channel 5. The series was produced and directed by filmmaker Loni Ding, one of the founders of the National Asian American Telecommunications Association, now the Center for Asian American Media.

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Asian American and Asian Diaspora Studies: Digital Archives & Oral History Collections

Digital Collections

Digital Collections

Asian American Studies Digital Archives and Websites (Alphabetical)

UC Berkeley Library Databases

Ethnic Studies Library Digital Collections