EAST LOS ANGELES : Chicano Resource Center Digs Deep

Sometimes, Brigida Campos is at a loss when young people come into the East Los Angeles Library and Chicano Resource Center asking for children’s and young adult literature by Chicano authors: Such books are simply rare.

Even so, Campos, the new director of the resource center, wants to expose the young readers to literature that appeals to them. And Campos, who started in her position in January, has a little more money than did her predecessor for the purchase of books and materials to increase the center’s appeal among youngsters, as well as the rest of the community.

Campos, 27, hopes to increase awareness of the center, founded in 1976, and maintain it as a resource for documenting the history and culture of Chicanos.

She knows these goals will be a challenge.

“To my knowledge, I never read a Chicano novel until I went away to college,” said Campos, who grew up in Hawthorne and attended UC Santa Barbara and UC Berkeley. “I didn’t know the center was here.”

She also faces a situation in which funding is precarious.

Former Director Luis Pedroza, who left last August to take a job at Rancho Santiago Community College in Santa Ana, had expressed frustration over a lack of money for new books and materials. His $33,000 budget for new materials was cut 85% from 1992 to 1993.

Campos is working with a $10,000 budget for books and another $5,000 for videos, compact discs and other audiovisual materials.

The Friends of the East L.A. Library and Chicano Resource Center, which Pedroza helped form to increase outside support for the library, raises money by holding regular book sales and events, such as an art exhibit of ancient indigenous peoples that opened Saturday.

To address the chronic shortage of library funding, the county supervisors last year considered forming a special library district that would have imposed a property levy to fund library branches. That idea died after the county found additional money for the 87 branches, allowing libraries that had been forced to severely cut their hours to reopen most days.

The East Los Angeles Library, at 4801 E. 3rd St., had cut its hours in half, operating only three days a week, but now is open Mondays through Saturdays.

With the renewed budget, which will last until the next round of budget decisions this summer, the library has been able to buy new books and materials to add to the center’s 10,000 items.

Among the center’s collections are rare footage of the Chicano

Moratorium; an anti-Vietnam War demonstration on Aug. 29, 1970; the East Los Angeles student walkouts; some of the earliest copies of Lowrider magazine, which documents the pachuco era, and local newspapers from the late-1800s and early part of this century.

The birth of the Chicano Resource Center was followed by similar centers in other county libraries documenting African American, Asian Pacific and Native American communities. The centers are unusual in that these types of collections are normally preserved by university libraries, not a municipal library system.

“A lot of (the visitors) are students and some are people doing special projects on their own or for a production company,” Campos said of the people who use the Chicano center. “Some are parents who want their children to know their history.”

Gregory Chavez, 13, lingered between shelves last week, browsing through historical books on Mayans and Olmecs. He was trying to find fictional works by Chicano authors but got distracted by the large texts and their pictures.

“I didn’t know there was so much,” he said, pausing to view photos of ancient temples in the Yucatan Peninsula.

Although budget sessions and possible cuts loom in the future, Campos focuses on the collection, which has drawn people as far away as Santa Barbara.

On a recent book-buying spree, she bought works of fiction, literary criticism and history, some of which are texts that can be used in the classroom to discuss the Mexican American experience.

Campos said some documents in the collection have been damaged, lost or stolen and need to be replaced. Other materials that could not be bought when the budget was too tight are no longer available, she said.

“There are movies and videos that over time are no longer available, so not having a continuous budget puts constraints on us. We will have to wait and see what happens in June, July and August with the budget,” she said.