The Asian American Resource Center, located on the third floor of the Oberlin College Main Library (near the "East Asian/African Literature" collection, Mudd Center), serves as the primary collection of Asian American materials and resources on the Oberlin College campus. Within the collection are over 1,000 printed materials, including books, journals, newspapers, magazines, reports of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights Reports, and U.S. Census Reports concerning Asian Americans and people of color. Newsletters from a multitude of grassroots and community Asian American organizations are available in the Center as well.
The Center provides individual articles on various Asian American topics such as Asian Americans and aging, Japanese American internment, and Bilingual Education. Dating Go to the early 1970s, relevant clippings from mainstream and progressive national newspapers and magazines, in addition to a compilation of Oberlin articles on the Asian American and Third World student communities, are contained in the Center.
Recordings of speakers who were sponsored by the Oberlin Asian American Alliance are also archived in the center. Topics of those recordings range from multinational corporations, Asian Pacific American Feminism and Third World politics, to Oberlin Asian American student activism. Documentation of Asian American Alliance programs and events is also included in the collection, as are slides, photographs, and other multi-media resources documenting Asian American student involvement at Oberlin.
The Asian American Resource Center also holds early copies of Asian American Studies bibliographies, guides, and syllabi from colleges and universities such as the University of California at Berkeley, UCLA, UC Davis, and Brown University.
Given the range of materials offered, the Center is a valuable collection for the Asian American community on the Oberlin campus and for those who are interested in Asian American issues. The collection is maintained by Asian American student organizations on campus. The Center is going through a reorganization process involving Asian American students, staff, and faculty to provide better access to the information housed in the collection.
For more information contact the Asian American Alliance.