Southern California AIDS Social Policy Archive

Administrative History

The AIDS History Project Collection was formed in the Fall of 1985 by Jim Kepner, as part of his International Gay and Lesbian Archives (IGLA), to document the history of the AIDS epidemic, in particular in Southern California. It consisted of organizational and subject files. Kepner formed and augmented the collection by removing AIDS-related materials from organizational and personal papers in the IGLA collections. The earliest project coordinator was Olaf Odegaard, succeeded in turn by David Grossman and Jack Carrel, who later worked for the Los Angeles Free Clinic and the Los Angeles County Sexually Transmitted Disease Program. The size of the collection was greatly increased in 2001/2002 by the acquisition of the Southern California AIDS Social Policy Archive, which had been formed at the University of Southern California in 1995 to preserve and make accessible pertinent private papers of David Johnson, the first Los Angeles City AIDS Coordinator, Dr. Michael Gottlieb, and Dr. Joel Weisman, materials from local AIDS activist groups, and papers of the Los Angeles City Attorney AIDS/HIV Discrimination Unit.