Scripps Archives contains a rich archival collection documenting over one-hundred years of oceanographic, earth, & climate research at Scripps, & more generally on the history of oceanography. Scripps Archives’ collections are used by historians, scientists, graduate students, media, & Scripps itself. Scripps Archives holds 1,360 collections, which are personal papers of scientists, or office records/files from scientific & administrative programs, ranging from single items received to very large collections, including still images, audio, moving images, autobiographical works, & oral histories. In addition to producing online guides to its collections, Scripps Archives digitizes content in various formats from its collections in order to improve user access & provide a rich online resource in support of the history of Scripps, oceanography, & climate science.
Access is by appointment - please email. Due to limited staffing, we do not offer walk-in access without appointment.
MANUSCRIPT & ARCHIVAL COLLECTIONS: personal files, office records, and collected items relating to the history of Scripps and to the history of oceanography
GUIDES TO SELECTED COLLECTIONS : these guides are comprised of the headings for file folders or similar arrangements in which scientists' personal papers and Scripps office/project records are filed... just like the original filing cabinets and office files we received. By reading through such a list, you can determine whether collection(s) may contain materials of interest clued by pertinent file folder heading(s). You would then request to see various box(es) and folder(s) in order to review their contents in person.
Search folder heading word(s) or phrases across these selected collections (via Google Advanced Search). Your search results will not be 100% reliable. A search won't find every occurrence of a word or phrase, and zero results do not mean the word/phrase did not occur in some folder list(s). Many old folder lists were produced in print format, and their scanned versions won't be character/word perfect. Therefore text searching is not perfect.
STILL IMAGES of people, ships, oceanographic instruments, buildings, metings, events, expeditions, marine environments & specimens associated with Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UCSD, etc. There's tens of thousands more images in-house -- we haven't scanned everything.
Panorama Collection : zoom in and out, and pan around on two old panorama photos of the SIO campus and on imagery of a few deep sea organisms in SIO collections.
MEDIA COLLECTION of films, tapes, audio, interviews, scientific and news conferences, oral histories, etc.
Media List : a selected list of our moving images (listed first) and audio items (following). We have more media items located within their parent archival collections.