Nearly 2,000 new photographs of science fiction fandom history are now available to the public. They come from the photograph collection of Jay Kay Klein, a fixture of mid-twentieth century sci-fi fandom.
Klein Librarian for Science Fiction and Fantasy Dr. Phoenix Alexander describes Klein as "a visual chronicler of the community." Rarely seen without a camera, Klein donated a vast collection of photographs from science fiction and fantasy conventions and related events to the UCR Library’s Special Collections and University Archives, along with an endowment that supports the collection.
Digitization began in 2017 — five years before Phoenix joined the library — with just under 6,000 images published to Calisphere. A comprehensive review by Special Collections staff, including Processing Archivist Andrew Lippert, took place from 2019 to 2021, then incorporated community feedback into updated descriptions for that entire first batch. Now Phoenix and Andrew are announcing the next milestone: the digital publication of the first of eleven boxes of photographs, comprising nearly 2,000 images from 47 conventions and events. Digitization of this new batch was led by UCR Library Digitization Services Specialist Mark Buchholz.
Among Phoenix’s personal favorites in the collection are the Star Trek costumes seen in early cosplay competitions. "The longer I'm in this job, the more I realize just how inspirational Star Trek was," Phoenix said, noting the franchise’s profound impact as a series that took science seriously, presented women and people of color in leadership roles, and inspired generations of engineers, writers, and pilots.
About 57,000 images remain to be digitized, a project that will take years. To speed up access, some photos are being released now with minimal descriptions of events and people depicted, while others have been fully annotated. This decision to publish before everything is perfect is deliberate.
"We don't want materials to be sitting in a repository for decades without anybody being able to see them," Phoenix said. "We'd rather have folks be able to view them and make identifications themselves."
As Phoenix suggested, Special Collections and University Archives is asking for the sci-fi community’s help to identify unnamed people in the photographs — particularly the everyday fans and lesser-known figures who built the sci-fi fandom community from the ground up — which primarily span the late 1950s through the 1980s. We have created a web page with guidance on commenting practices to explain how comments are moderated and the types of descriptions that will be the most helpful.
You can view the full collection on Calisphere. To participate in the identification process, select an image and scroll to the bottom and click Join the Discussion.