The Bakersfield College Archives is located on the southeast wall on the second floor of the Grace Van Dyke Bird Library. It is a door many have walked by but have seldom acknowledged.
The archives is filled with photos, letters, books and many other memorabilia, which has been found or donated to the BC Archives.
One of the items that can be found in the archive room is an Olympic Torch that was carried in the 2002 Olympics by retired BC professor, Chuck Wall, along with the coat that he wore.
There is also a folder filled with letters that were written by Grace Van Dyke Bird, who was president of the college at the time, to all of the soldiers that were from BC that were fighting at Pearl Harbor. “The very first officer killed at Pearl Harbor was from Bakersfield, and his older brother was a BC student,” said Jerry Ludeke, who is the acting director and part of the executive committee of the Bakersfield College Archives.
The move to the hill in the spring of 1956 was a big step for Bakersfield College. “We have a folder with notes and documents discussing the move and how they were going to go about doing it,” said Ludeke.
There are also several boxes filled with old BC school catalogs. One, dating back to 1929, was only a few pages long and listed only the very basic classes such as English and math.
Between 1931 and 1981, BC also had a yearbook called the Raconteur. “It is fun to see what your old professors looked like back then,” said Ludeke.
“Those who can’t imagine the past, can’t envision the future,” are words on an envelope found on a desk in the archive room.
“That pretty much sums it all up for me,” said Christian Torres, archives assistant, in regard to the archive room. “This college has been here for almost 100 years, and we want to try to keep that rich history alive.”
Besides learning about the history of BC and its people, the archive room can also prove helpful when doing research, said Juliet Fox, archives student assistant. “A lot of instructors, especially history professors, like you to write about local history, and doing it about BC is a great way to fulfill that.”
While being interviewed, the staff of the BC Archives was busy mailing out a few thousand solicitation letters and newsletters, according to Torres.
The letter was requesting the support of patrons and alumni to help fund the work of the BC Archives, which is trying to hire additional staff to help with cataloging and to supervise the student helpers to make sure that the “collections are professionally cataloged, secured and stored.”
Although they currently have no concrete plans to move the archive room to a larger area, they do hope to plan for it in the future, “We are going to be getting some rather large items soon that we will need to make room for,” said Ludeke. “We would like to encourage anyone that has old stuff from BC not to just throw it out; we’d love to get it. That is how our collection grows.”