Early library staff were mostly work study students without backgrounds in library science or experience running a library. However, they quickly understood that standardized library descriptive, classification and access systems weren’t going to work for their growing collection or communities. They needed their own intellectual infrastructure for information retrieval. All of the resources they worked hard to collect would mean little if they could be found only through a racist or stereotyped framework.
Jose Antonio Arce is credited with having conceived of the Chicano Classification System, a modification of the Library of Congress Classification system that aimed to center a Chicanx worldview. Arce consulted with librarians in the main Berkeley library system in order to devise a way to organize the Chicano Studies Library and collaborated with student workers such as Elva Yañez to realize his vision. In 1974 he released the Chicano Classification system. The Chicano Classification System is an important part of the story of the library itself and is used to organize the Chicano Studies Collection within the Ethnic Studies Library today.
The Chicano Movement of the late 60s and 70s produced an explosion of political, literary, artistic, and intellectual literature. Chicanx librarians desperately needed an index so that they could point students to articles for research, affirmation of their identities or political organizing. Mainstream reference tools did not include or even acknowledge Chicanx literature. This exclusion perpetuated the falsehood that there was no history of Chicano literature. In 1978, the Chicano Periodical Indexing Project brought together a group of fourteen librarians across seven institutions. They indexed 18 periodicals, among which were Agenda, Atisbos, Aztlán, Caracol, Chicano Law Review, Con Safos, De Colores, Encuentro, El Grito, Grito del Sol, Journal of Mexican American History, The Journal of Mexican American Studies and Somos. The first Chicano Periodical Index was produced using an outside company’s computer system. Soon afterwards, García-Ayvens purchased an AlphaMicro computing system to bring the entire process within the control of library staff. The first edition of the Chicano Periodical Index (CPI) was published in 1981 by G.K. Hall. The thick, beautifully bound green volume included 24,000 entries and is the manifestation of many hours, hands and hearts that devoted their time as volunteers to bring the index to life.
As plans for the Chicano Periodical Index developed, it became clear that a dedicated set of controlled terms was needed to describe the contents of the articles. The Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH), a standardized list of terms that libraries are required to use included terms such as “Illegal Aliens,” that were demeaning as well as inaccurate. The LCSH also lacked specific terms for concepts that were part of the Chicanx worldview. Understandably, some of those concepts are best expressed in Spanish. The Chicano Thesaurus is a refusal to accept the unacceptable. The project to create the Chicano Thesaurus ran in parallel to the creation of the Chicano Periodical Index and was first published in 1979.
In 1984, Lillian Castillo-Speed became Coordinator of the Chicano Studies Library. Castillo-Speed continued to develop the Chicano Periodical Index and Chicano Thesaurus in collaboration with Chabrán and García-Ayvens who continued to contribute to these projects after leaving the Chicano Studies Library. Working as a team, Castillo-Speed led these projects through many technological transitions. She first moved the projects away from an outdated BASIC system and then worked closely with programmers to migrate the index and thesaurus to CD-Rom, Windows based systems and later to an open-source web content management system to create the Chicano Database, now available online. The Chicano Thesaurus was officially added to the Library of Congress’ list of approved alternative terms in 1990, making it easier for other libraries to use Chicano Thesaurus terms.
The library also created its own publishing unit. Since the main UC library system did not list the CSL’s holdings in its catalog, the CSL made a practice of publishing a list of recent additions to their collections in order to enhance discovery of its collections In a move that would prove key to the unit’s later success, early library staff had the foresight to microfilm the library’s unique collection of Chicano newspapers. As other libraries began collecting Chicanx materials, the newspapers were in demand but often no longer available. The Chicano Studies Library was able to meet the needs of other libraries by selling a collection of the microfilmed newspapers. The funds generated from these sales enabled the library to expand its publishing unit and pursue publishing projects such as the The Chicano Anthology Index, the Bibliography of Writings on La Mujer, the Chicana Studies Index, and Arte Chicano. Each of these publications was the first of its kind. They could only be created with the Chicano Studies Library’s collections, its reputation among scholars, and the fact that it had its own funding to pay for printing costs. The Publications Unit team of the 1980s was small but highly talented. Publications Coordinator Carolyn Soto brought her design expertise, while then Coordinator and Publications Editor Francisco García-Ayvens brought his sharp editorial eye. When G.K. Hall discontinued publishing the index as soon as it failed to generate revenue, the library took over and continued to publish the print editions, the CD-ROM versions and to license the Chicano Database.
The Chicano Studies Library overcame the practices of mainstream librarianship and the mainstream publishing industry to meet the needs of its communities.