Los Angeles Archives, III

In my previous post about the Los Angeles City Archives, I described an "organized room" and a "disorganized room." But that's not accurate. The organized room looks meticulous and tidy, yet it holds vast mysteries. And the disorganized room you see here, the vault, is very much in order in many ways. Yet there's work to be done.

Archivist Michael Holland cannot shelve, check and itemize every day. There are documents to be delivered, boxes to be retrieved, city officials to be informed. The job is immense.

I'd love to give Michael a staff to go through it all. But there's something beautiful about these old books as they are. In a way, I hope there will always be mysteries in the archives.

Then again, organization has its beauties, too.

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You can visit the Los Angeles Archives, too. (You even can see some records online.) If you want a tour, just call for an appointment. If you want to see a specific document, you need to call ahead for that, too, so the document can be found and retrieved for you.

Michael can often be heard on KPCC's Off Ramp with John Rabe, Saturdays 12-1pm and Sundays 6-7pm. Thanks to Anne Louise Bannon for setting up the tour and coming with me.