USC to House New Archive About AIDS : Health: L.A. donates money, documents for facility. Southland observes world day focused on the disease.

In one of a number of events throughout the region observing World AIDS Day, Los Angeles officials announced Friday that they are donating thousands of papers to USC for the creation of an AIDS archive.

The archive will document a remarkable period in the early years of the epidemic when activists, politicians and the dying struggled against apathy and ignorance of the disease that has claimed the lives of more than 10,000 Los Angeles residents.

“These archives in some ways are a testimonial to their living and fighting for the fulfillment of their needs,” said city AIDS coordinator Ferd Eggan, the driving force behind the archive’s creation. “I believe that deserves to be part of the historical record.”

People with AIDS and HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, are now protected from discrimination by federal law. But in 1985, a month after actor Rock Hudson disclosed that he had the disease, Los Angeles became the first government entity in the nation to adopt such legislation.

“The fact that Los Angeles was a pioneer in these areas made me think we needed a record for the future that could be used as an example of how government and residents of the city can create real improvements in the ways people’s lives are led,” said Eggan, one of several city officials to announce the archive at a City Hall news conference.

City documents, as well as materials from local AIDS activist groups, are being donated to USC, which will house the archive with its library special collections.

The archive is “of great relevance to contemporary Los Angeles,” said Lynn Sipe, acting director of university libraries at USC. “This seems to us a very apt type of addition to our research capabilities.”

Earlier this year, USC became home to one of the world’s largest gay archives when it agreed to house two merged Los Angeles collections of gay history.

The city is also donating $50,000 to USC, $40,000 of which will be used to hire a part-time archivist to organize the material. Sipe said the remaining $10,000 will go to the fine arts school to subsidize a project of artwork by people with AIDS.

The archive will include papers from the City Council and the city attorney’s office, records of the late David Johnson, the city’s first AIDS coordinator, and material from Michael S. Gottlieb and Joel Weisman, the Los Angeles physicians who wrote the first account of AIDS cases published in medical literature.

Deputy City Atty. David Schulman, who joined the AIDS/HIV Discrimination Unit in 1986, said the anti-bias measure, which forbids discrimination on the basis of AIDS or HIV, was passed “when the public was horribly confused about how HIV was transmitted.”

A decade later, people with AIDS continue to rely on that policy. Last year, the city received 52 complaints alleging discrimination on the basis of AIDS.

In other Southland observances of World AIDS Day, art was draped at the J. Paul Getty Museum and volunteers in West Hollywood handed out T-shirts with the slogan, “HIV. You Don’t Have to Get It.” There were also candlelight marches and religious services.