Call Number:

SCRC 396

Repository:

Temple University Libraries: Special Collections Research Center

Extent:

1135 linear feet (1075 boxes + 72 microfilm reels)

Language Note:

Materials primarily in English. Spanish, French, German, Italian, Chinese, Vietnamese, Dutch, Korean, Persian, and other languages represented.

Preferred Citation:

[Title and date of item], Contemporary Culture Collection (CCC) Periodicals, SCRC 396, Special Collections Research Center, Temple University Libraries, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Date:

1912-2019 (inclusive) and 1960s-1980s (bulk)

Form:

Ephemera, Newsletters, Newspapers, Pamphlets, Periodicals, Photocopies, Poems, Press releases, Publications (documents), and Zines

Abstract:

The Contemporary Culture Collection (CCC) was established in April 1969 by Temple University faculty and Temple University Libraries in an effort to preserve underground and anti-establishment literature representative of the American counterculture movement of late 1960s and early 1970s. Initially, Temple library staff solicited subscriptions from underground newspapers, GI and draft resistance publications, pamphlets from counterculture groups and the Students for a Democratic Society, and radical professional journals.

In later years, acquisitions to the Contemporary Culture Collection grew to include personal papers and archives of underground or social activist organizations such as the Liberation News Service (LNS), Committee of Small Magazine Editors and Publishers (COSMEP), and the Philadelphia Lesbian and Gay Task Force (PLGTF); microfilm collections of underground newspapers; broadsides, posters, and fliers; zines, artists' book and underground and alternative comics; as well as thousands of periodicals including alternative, independent, and small press literary and poetry journals.

Since its inception, the primary focus has been to collect English language materials from the United States, with the bulk of the material dating from the 1960s forward. However other languages are represented, most notably Spanish, and materials dating as early as the 1910s are included. CCC materials document distinct, controversial, and often conflicting points of view, opinions, and information usually not available in commercially published sources such as mass market, academic, or government publications.

From 1969 to 1994, the CCC had a dedicated curator responsible for acquisitions to the collection and its management, including Victoria Nelson, Robert A. Sosin, Elliot Shore, Patricia J. Case, and Eleanor Cox Clever.

The CCC hosted a federally funded grant project known as the Alternative Acquisitions Project between 1978 and 1980 which surveyed acquisition practices of select college libraries in the U.S. to better understand the relationship between small and alternative press publishers and those institutions; conducted seminars on selection, processing, and providing reference services to alternative publications; and produced the handbook, Alternative Materials in Libraries: A Handbook (Scarecrow Press, 1982).

Additionally, two hundred articles from one hundred journals and newspapers held in the Contemporary Culture Collection were reproduced in the publication, Alternative Papers: Selections from the Alternative Press, 1979-1980 (Temple University Press, 1982).

Temple University Libraries' Special Collections Research Center is actively adding to the Contemporary Culture Collection.

The Contemporary Culture Collection (CCC) Periodicals consist of over 5,500 titles of alternative, underground, activist, and radical newspapers, magazines, journal, newsletters, pamphlets, and zines that reflect contemporary issues, movements, and trends. Little magazines, chapbooks, and poetry and literary journals produced by primarily American and Canadian small press publishers, are also included in the collection.

The periodicals document a broad range of subject areas including social and liberation movements; political organizations of the far left and right; ecology, energy and environmental advocacy; human and animal rights; citizen action and consumer groups; migrant labor and workers' rights; war, pacifism, and nuclear disarmament; prison reform; student activism; drug culture and underground music scenes; experimental and avant garde art; minorities and oppressed people; collectives and communal living; radical approaches to health care and education; and fringe religious sects, among other topics.

Particular areas of strength include materials pertaining to activist groups organized by and supporting people of color including the Black Power movement; feminism and women's liberation; socialism; and LGBTQ+ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and other marginalized sexualities and gender identities) authors and communities. The bulk of the periodicals are published in the United States. Canada, England, and other countries are also well represented. Many periodical titles in CCC are listed in either the Alternative Press Index produced by the Alternative Press Center or the Left Index.

The title of each periodical in the collection and available volume number(s) and date(s) are listed in the inventory below. Because the periodicals are primarily grouped into two large alphabetical runs by size, researchers should consult the series 1 and 2 inventory, if not all three series when searching for volumes for a specific title(s) to ensure discoverability as format of a given title may have changed over time.