Remember the District Weekly? Long Beach's own alt-weekly, created by a bunch of former Weeklings after the Great OC Weekly Schism of 2007? Went out of business in 2009 due to the Great Recession, the death of journalism and other issues I'm not exactly at liberty to discuss.
After getting my promotion, I found an almost-complete run of District issues. Instead of tossing them out, I figured I could donate the collection to Long Beach State because they don't have any in their archives and, you know, the District is a part of Long Beach history and deserves archiving.
Boy, was I wrong
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Yesterday, I heard from some archivist or other from the school denying my request to donate the issues. She said that the journalism department didn't want them because “they do not think this archive would be used much by students or faculty”–yeah, because students and teachers couldn't possibly learn anything from a case study of the District (and now you know the value of a journalism degree from Long Beach St.). As for the archives themselves, the lady said “such archives take a lot of staff time to process and maintain.”
Uh, not really. Find a file cabinet, stuff them in there, and wait a couple of decades before you move them into another file cabinet.
There are many fine academics and librarians at Long Beach St. But that two key departments don't give a shit about a piece of Long Beach history is one final, ignominious blow to the District, one its legacy doesn't deserve. Will any Long Beach archives take these issues, or does UC Irvine have to show why it's badass again and make Long Beach look like the ugly intellectual stepsister to OC and LA it'll always be?
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