Library Puts Valley History on the Web

Snow. The San Fernando Valley doesn’t see much of it. But when it does, people respond the way they do to snow in Miami. They run outside to have their pictures taken in it.

Log on to the new San Fernando Valley History Digital Library at https://digital-library.csun.edu. Type in “snow” and almost a dozen photos pop up. One, taken in Chatsworth after the big snowfall of Jan. 11, 1949, features an unidentified child, bundled up and grinning behind a snowman so badly constructed that it could only have been made by someone new to the medium.

The image is one of more than 2,000 photos, illustrations, maps, manuscripts and other visual records of the Valley’s past that are now available on the Internet, thanks to the Cal State Northridge digital collection.

“There are quite a few people out there who have pieces of the history of the Valley,” said Tony Gardner, a Cal State Northridge librarian who guided the project.

The idea of gathering all those fragments into a single digital archive came from the San Fernando Valley Heritage Network, a consortium of historical societies, museums and other organizations interested in local history that was formed in 2000, Gardner said.

The digital library, launched with a grant of $153,000 from the California State Library, opens officially today.

The library’s subjects range from actors associated with the Valley, including onetime Granada Hills rancher James Cagney, to local youth clubs. The site’s logo is an image of a California mission with the sun rising behind it--borrowed from a vintage crate label for Morning Sun brand lemons, from San Fernando. Citrus labels are part of the electronic collection.

The photo of snow in Chatsworth belongs to the Chatsworth Historical Society, one of more than 40 institutions and individuals that contributed to the library.

Local historical society archives are invaluable repositories of the Valley’s past, Gardner said, “but they aren’t easily accessible. Many don’t have the staff to keep regular hours.”

Most are staffed by volunteers, he pointed out, and some have makeshift facilities.

The digital library won’t just make material available, he said. It also will make the public more aware of the very existence of some of these local collections.

That was one of the reasons the Leonis Adobe Museum in Calabasas was happy to participate, Director Phyllis Power said.

“Even though we’ve been open for more than 30 years, it’s just amazing how many people have never heard of us,” she said. “It’s just one more means of reaching people.”

Author Kevin Roderick said the digital library contained more photos than he was able to find while researching his recently published book, “The San Fernando Valley: America’s Suburb.”

“If this had been around, it would have been excellent [as a research tool],” said Roderick, a former Los Angeles Times reporter. “It would have saved a lot of time.”

One value of the digital library, Roderick said, is that it is a reminder that the Valley has roots that predate the building boom after World War II and the “Valley Girl” razzing of the 1980s.

“The Valley has been easily dismissed by a lot of people as not very attractive and miles and miles of sameness,” Roderick said. But the existence of almost a dozen historical societies suggests it has a rich past: “That doesn’t happen in places that are just suburbs, like Lakewood and Levittown.”

Roderick, 48, grew up in Northridge when many of its neighborhoods were being built. He and his friends passed their time, he said, “gathering scrap wood and making skateboards and treehouses out of it. It was a very quasi-rural existence. There were horses in the neighborhood.”

Documenting the Valley’s past becomes more urgent as the area changes: “It’s losing its singular identity,” he said.

The digital library, Gardner said, “will make it easier for researchers who are far from here.” He also believes it will reach an audience that would never actually go to one of the contributing institutions. “We get people who just stay at home and look at the Internet,” he said.

Gardner made some riveting discoveries in the course of cataloging material for the online archive. A private donor contributed a 1925 brochure proposing the creation of an ambitious new university, a “metropolis of knowledge . . . the most magnificent, worthwhile project in Southern California today.” The campus, which was never built, was planned for the Benmar Hills area of Burbank.

One advantage of a digital collection, Gardner pointed out, is that documents can be copied and put online while the originals are returned to their owners.

The library is a work in progress, he said, and its organizers hope donors will come forward with additional material. It has room for a few thousand more images.

The information available is as accurate as the staff could make it, but some is guesswork, Gardner said. “We’re open for corrections,” he said. “We did as much research as we could. A lot of it was based on what the owner of the material told us or what was written on the back of the photograph.”