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January 20, 2012

Oswald’s Bulgarian Connection: The Spas Raikin Papers

Spas Raikin as a student in Bulgaria in 1946, during a summer job building a rai

The Hoover Archives has received the papers of Spas Raikin, a Bulgarian-American historian, and émigré anti-communist activist. His papers, contained in ninety-nine binders, document Raikin’s historical research and writing as well as Bulgarian émigré activities in the United States. Binder nr. 71, however, is different from the others. It documents an episode in Raikin’s life that has a place in world history: his meeting with Lee Harvey Oswald in the port at Hoboken, New Jersey on June 13, 1962, when Oswald was returning from the Soviet Union.

January 17, 2012

Interviews of Conservative Luminaries Available

Audio interviews of William F. Buckley, Steve Forbes, Milton Friedman, Newt Gingrich, Barry Goldwater, Edwin Meese III, and Ronald Reagan are among the more than two hundred cassette tapes that have been digitized for preservation and access by Hoover’s audio lab.

January 9, 2012 | Hoover Archivists' Musings (blog)

Floppy Diskography

Recently three researchers sought access to the contents of 3.5-inch floppy disks in three archival collections at Hoover. You might think that responding to these requests is routine, but, after activating the write-protection tab and scanning for viruses, the process can take many turns.

January 3, 2012

Finding Aids Posted Online

Finding aids to the collections described below are now available through the Online Archive of California.

Peace subject collection, 1891–2005
María Haydée Terán letters, 1969–70
Hernán Cubillos Sallato papers, 1978–93
Elbridge Durbrow papers, 1938–96
Bailey Willis papers, 1916–43
William Offutt Doub papers, 1970–74
American Association for Higher Education records, 1944–2005

December 14, 2011

Firing Line episodes available for the first time through Amazon Instant Video

Thirty-two programs from William F. Buckley’s Firing Line television series are now available on Amazon Instant Video, which offers instant streaming of the programs on compatible devices. Featured guests on those programs, which date from 1972 to 1999, include Newt Gingrich, Ronald Reagan, Thomas Sowell, Margaret Thatcher, Joan Baez, Christopher Hitchens, and Daniel Patrick Moynihan.

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Chiang Kai-shek Diaries

Chiang Kai-Shek diaries

The Hoover Institution has been helping preserve the handwritten diaries of Chiang Kai-shek and his son, Chiang Ching-kuo, since Chiang family members deposited them at Hoover in 2005. The diaries cover the period from 1917, when Chiang Kai-shek rose to the leadership of the Kuomintang, to 1972, the last year he was reelected president.

To ensure their preservation, use copies of the handwritten pages are available at the Hoover Archives. For information on viewing these copies in person, see our hours and directions.

An inventory of the Chiang Kai-shek diaries is available at the Online Archive of California or as a PDF..

Peggy Chang, host of Voice of America's Cultural Odyssey, a weekly Mandarin-language TV program, visited the Hoover Archives in March 2011 to make note of the diaries’ value to researchers and see the steps Hoover has undertaken to preserve them. More information about the show can be found here (article is in Mandarin, as is the show).

Ongoing from April 12, 2011
Free Admission
Hours of Operation: Tuesday through Saturday, 11am to 4pm

A Century of Change: China 1911–2011

On April 12, 2011, the Hoover Institution commemorated the hundredth anniversary of the 1911 revolution and the founding of the Chinese republic with the opening of an exhibition of photographs, posters, letters, memorabilia, and audiovisual materials from its library and archives, documenting those momentous events in Chinese history and the ensuing tumultuous century. This exhibit will close on February 18, 2012.

Click here to see past exhibits related to East Asia.

Read an article about the exhibit, published in Hoover Digest.

At the core of the founding of the Hoover Institution in 1919, the Hoover Institution Library and Archives are a central part of the overall mission of the Institution. By collecting rare and unique material on political, economic, and social change in the modern era; preserving it; and providing it to researchers, the library and archives provide a rich and growing knowledge base and promote and encourage scholarship and research.

Archival holding amount to nearly 6,000 separate collections that encompass an estimated 50 million original documents; 15 million documents on microfilm; upward of 15 million digitized images; more than 100,000 speeches, broadcasts, and historical records on audiotape and videos; and some 120,000 political posters. The library holds 900,000 rare books, special collections, and serials.

Collecting areas of special interest include Nationalist China, imperial Russia, the USSR and post-Soviet Russia and Central and East Europe, political ideologies and movements in the United States and the West, and the broadcast collections of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and Firing Line .

Most Accessed Collections in the Reading Room