“All of this stuff doesn’t belong to us – it belongs to the culture that spawned us,…It seemed like getting it into a campus archive, with access to the people in the community that gave rise to this, was the right thing to do.” – Bob Weir
It was announced this week that the University of California at Santa Cruz will be the new home of the Grateful Dead’s archive. The archive will be housed in a room dubbed ‘Dead Central’ in the McHenry Library.
The Archive contains 30 years of material including original documents, clippings, media, article and other publications about the Dead and its individual members, its tours and performances, productions, and business. Also included are show files, programs, newsletters, posters, cover art, photographs, tickets and stickers.
Also included will be correspondence (upwards of 75,000 fan letters) and art contributed over the years by Deadheads.
It will take upwards of 2 years to process the archive.
Grateful Dead Archive page at UC Santa Cruz special Collections
Article in Silicon Valley’s Mercury News