The California Indian Library Collections (CILC) was established in 1988 with funding provided by the federal Library Services and Construction Act, administered by the California State Library in Sacramento. CILC is located at the Ethnic Studies Library, and housed in the Native American Studies Collection, at the University of California at Berkeley.
In 1987, Gary E. Strong, the California State Librarian, recognized the growing needs of the state's underserved communities as well as the steady growth of a diverse population. At that time he called for a "rethinking of public library services, a broadening of awareness and valuing of the diversity of the people that compose and will compose California." Under the heading of Partnerships for Change (PFC), Mr. Strong announced programs that would build on previous efforts to strengthen responsive library services. The PFC mission is to award community grants, develop a system of ethnic resource centers, heighten state wide awareness, and create forums for future change. The California Indian Library Collections project was funded as an adjunct to this vision with the aim of returning unique cultural materials to Native Americans and making the collections available to all citizens via their local libraries.
Research on the state's Native Americans has been mostly published in obscure scholarly sources and few specialists in the cultural materials exist outside major museums and universities. Native American collections in public libraries have not addressed the needs of the more rural regions in the State, nor have the materials available to public education always been adequate. In order to overcome these limitations, an alliance was formed between the California State Library (CSL) and the Hearst Museum of Anthropology to make use of the priceless resources accumulated over many decades at the University of California at Berkeley. These archives which consist of many unpublished manuscripts and field notes, obscure scholarly articles, turn-of-the-century photographs as well as rare recordings of songs and dances have remained essentially unavailable to the general public. The Hearst Museum and CSL resolved to select and duplicate these materials from the vast anthropological, linguistical, and historical accumulation, and place them in a library facility in each California county.
After the thirteen University of California, Berkeley, campus archives were surveyed, mini-archives for each county library were extracted from the University holdings. Each county archive reflects the culture of the particular Native American tribal units who live, or lived, in that county. The county sets are augmented by a composite collection housed in the California Room at the State Library in Sacramento. The composite set will provide Native Americans, scholars, and interested library patrons convenient access to the entire collection in one locale. A finding guide specific to each county collection and a composite set of finding guides for the CSL collection are available to help access the materials.
The CILC project is also a cooperative effort between the county libraries and the Native Americans living in the area. County librarians curate the collections while Native Californians are the cultural and moral proprietors of the collections. For many Native Californians, hearing the tribal songs and seeing the family photographs for the first time means discovering their historical roots. Each county library generously provides funding for staffing, reference service, and maintenance. CILC encourages local involvement in preserving and passing on Native Californian cultural heritage as an essential representation of the Native American view of the world.
Many people have worked on the project. The first project director, Dr. Lee Davis, the CILC staff, and University of California, Berkeley, student interns were responsible for assembling the collections. Photographs from the Hearst Museum archives were duplicated by Dr. Lee Brumbaugh who has also served in an advisory capacity. In 1992, the CILC staff and interns, under the direction of the current project manager, Dr. Jeannine Davis Kimball, began to organize the materials and place the information on computerized databases to assist library patrons in finding materials they need. These databases form the core of the collections' finding guides for the first twenty counties as well as the CSL composite set.
Much of the research information on California Indian cultures amassed at UC Berkeley has remained unavailable to the general public, the public educations system, public libraries, and Indigenous communities.
The existence of the collections would be a magnet to draw Indigenous communities to the library, increasing library use. Building and using the collections should be an interactive process. For example, the correcting of errors in existing information. Thus giving the community the reassurance that the collection is theirs, however, will continue to be housed with the assigned public library in that county.