The Taiwanese American Archive (TAA) started as a Los Angeles as Subject Resident Archivist project under LAAS Resident Archivist Joanna Chen Cham (joanna.yl.chen@gmail.com), in collaboration with USC East Asian Library Director, Kenneth Klein, and local Taiwanese American community leaders, including Lung Chen, a community leader, Wencheng Lin (wen1945@gmail.com), Editor of a weekly Taiwanese American newspaper, Pacific Times, and TaiwaneseAmerican.org (https://www.taiwaneseamerican.org/), a nonprofit organization that seeks to promote Taiwanese American identity, heritage, and culture. The documentary record of the Taiwanese American experience has largely been overlooked or subsumed, with few collections collected, and there is a large gap in the historical record regarding Taiwanese Americans in Los Angeles and in the nation. The impetus to digitize Taiwanese American materials and capture the historical record before it is gone has been welcomed and supported by the local and national Taiwanese American community, who has funded the digitization for the first TAA collection: Pacific Times (1987-2010), as well as by other archivists, librarians, and academics. Eventually, the hope is that the Taiwanese American Archive would bring together documents, photographs, oral histories, moving images, ephemera, and more to preserve and give access to Taiwanese American community life, starting from the 1960's, to document the history, family and community life, political activism, and academic and social contributions of Taiwanese Americans.
Pacific Times (太平洋時報), 1987-
Pacific Times (https://pacific-times.com/) is a weekly Taiwanese American newspaper published in Los Angeles. It has published local and national news about and relevant to the Taiwanese American community since 1987, and has readers across the globe. With 50 issues printed annually from 1987 to the present, this newspaper collection is significant both in volume as well as content, covering a long, continuous span of time from some of the earlier waves of Taiwanese American immigration to the present, including attitudes and reactions toward Taiwan as decades-long martial law was lifted in 1987 and Taiwan transitioned into a democracy. It also includes news events important to the Taiwanese American community, prominent community members, and various other columns. It is published in traditional Chinese characters.
The following issues were either missing or lacked pages when digitization occurred and are thus not available here.