In an unremarkable room in a corner of UC Irvine's main library, the little-known stories of Southeast Asian refugees are kept alive.
The room holds rare items from decades ago -- audio recordings of those recounting their journeys fleeing Vietnam by boat, letters written from refugee camps to families left behind and refugee orientation brochures they picked up upon arriving in Orange County.
Researchers and academics from across the country, even from as far as Japan and Germany, have come to dig through UC Irvine's Southeast Asian Archive -- the only collection in the world that continues to document the transitions of refugees and immigrants from Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos to life in the United States.
But with the university facing severe budget cutbacks, some academics fear that the investment and legwork that kept the archive vibrant will suffer.
The university did not replace the full-time librarian when she retired; Anne Frank spent decades collecting materials from refugee communities. Instead, UC Irvine installed a research librarian who divides her time overseeing the research needs of other departments.
"This is part of a larger picture of public universities facing severe cutbacks," said Linda Vo, head of UC Irvine's Asian American Studies Department, who is also a member of the archive advisory board. "We are facing drastic cuts that are going to impact our libraries and collections in various ways."
Not everyone agrees. Library officials say that despite budget difficulties, the university is committed to increasing the collection.
After the end of the Vietnam War and other area conflicts, nearly 1 million Southeast Asian refugees settled in the U.S. from 1975 to the early 1980s. Many found their way to Southern California. Today, Orange County is home to the largest population of Vietnamese Americans in the country. Most of the archive's materials document Vietnamese refugees.
Vo and other archive enthusiasts are worried that with reduced staff and funding, the archive will no longer reflect the still-changing Vietnamese American experience.
"It is a very valuable collection, but it involves more than archiving and being there in the library," she said. "It involves encouraging people to preserve the history of their community and family, as well as an important part of American history."
