Spotlight: Water Resources Collections and Archive

The Water Resources Collections and Archives (WRCA), http://library.ucr.edu/wrca/ located on the campuses of the University of California Riverside and California State University, San Bernadino, was founded in 1958 in order “to collect, organize and make accessible information about water in all its manifestations.” The WRCA was originally designed as both a library and an archive so as “to preserve and make accessible unique technical information about all aspects of water in the West, [both] nationally and internationally.” Now recognized as one of the preeminent water law archives in the country, the collection is of interest to researchers focusing on water rights, dams, floods, rivers, aquifers and other water related issues in environmental legal history.

The archive’s collection which is searchable through the University’s Scotty Catalog and through the Online Archive of California is organized into five categories including, archival manuscripts, digital materials, maps, photographs, oral histories and

consists of more than 200,000 technical reports, 1,500 specialized newsletters, over 5,000 archival maps, and hundreds of videos. In addition, WRCA manages over 200 archival collections, and has more than 100,000 historic photographs and aerial photographs that document the history of water development in the West.

For an article discussing the archive in more detail click here.