Claude B. Zachary
USC Libraries
If you have a passion for Trojan history, Claude Zachary is your go-to person. As USC university archivist, Zachary oversees a wealth of materials – many only rarely seen – that chronicle our university’s history and growth.
A longtime practicing Tibetan Buddhist, Zachary was first inspired to go into archival work when he realized the importance of preserving the story of how Tibetan Buddhism came to the United States and the teachings that had been presented since the early 1970s.
“When you’re in the middle of something, you think, ‘This is what we’re doing,’” he explained, “but you don’t always think about how to pass it along, how to preserve it and make it accessible.”
Now he also is trying to make sure that the books, periodicals, papers, correspondence, photographs, artifacts and audiovisual materials that tell USC’s story will be available to researchers and Trojan history buffs not just today, but also hundreds of years from now.
“The recorded history of Southern California reaches back only a few hundred years,” he noted, “and USC has been here since 1880, so they’re really intertwined.”
Beyond its enduring historical value, the University Archives collection includes materials that hold a personal significance for Zachary. When he joined the USC Libraries staff in 1998, for example, he was delighted to find items related to English professor Frank Baxter, whom he remembered as “Dr. Research” from the Bell Laboratory Science Series television shows that were a staple in American classrooms from the 1960s through the ’80s. Zachary was also pleased to be reintroduced to USC art professor Merrell Gage, whose film The Face of Lincoln also was shown in school auditoriums across the country.