Search Help

How does this work?
There are many ways to search the collections of the Freedom Archives. Below is a brief guide that will help you conduct effective searches. Note, anytime you search for anything in the Freedom Archives, the first results that appear will be our digitized items. Information for items that have yet to be scanned or yet to be digitized can still be viewed, but only by clicking on the show link that will display the hidden (non-digitized) items. If you are interested in accessing these non-digitized materials, please email info@freedomarchives.org.
Exploring the Collections without the Search Bar
Under the heading Browse By Collection, you’ll notice most of the Freedom Archives’ major collections. These collections have an image as well as a short description of what you’ll find in that collection. Click on that image to instantly explore that specific collection.
Basic Searching
You can always type what you’re looking for into the search bar. Certain searches may generate hundreds of results, so sometimes it will help to use quotation marks to help narrow down your results. For instance, searching for the phrase Black Liberation will generate all of our holdings that contain the words Black and Liberation, while searching for “Black Liberation” (in quotation marks) will only generate our records that have those two words next to each other.
Advanced Searching
The Freedom Archives search site also understands Boolean search logic. Click on this link for a brief tutorial on how to use Boolean search logic. Our search function also understands “fuzzy searches.” Fuzzy searches utilize the (*) and will find matches even when users misspell words or enter in only partial words for the search. For example, searching for liber* will produce results for liberation/liberate/liberates/etc.
Keyword Searches
You’ll notice that under the heading KEYWORDS, there are a number of words, phrases or names that describe content. Sometimes these are also called “tags.” Clicking on these words is essentially the same as conducting a basic search.

Search Results

Pelican Bay Prison Pelican Bay Prison
Date: 11/25/1994Call Number: PM 349AFormat: Cass ACollection: Pelican Bay
About the inhuman conditions of Pelican Bay control unit prison. Prisoners describe how the prison prevents them from receiving pictures from home. The prison also prohibits having books, because they can be used as weapons. Also mentioned was the lack of health services and the difficulty of obtaining medications.
Pelican Bay Pelican Bay
Call Number: CD 880Format: DVDCollection: Pelican Bay
Pelican Bay under Construction (no sound, poor video) Short to the House - includes interviews (audio only) of Pelican Bay prisoners, officials from Pelican Bay and the city of Crescent City, Ruth Gilmore.
Prison Program at New College - Interview with Hugo Pinell Prison Program at New College - Interview with Hugo Pinell
Call Number: CD 881Format: DVDCollection: Pelican Bay
Performance and program regarding prison conditions 12/13/1997. Part 2 Interview with Hugo Pinell November, 1983 in Pelican Bay Prison.
Pelican Bay Interviews - Prison Program New College P 1 Pelican Bay Interviews - Prison Program New College P 1
Call Number: CD 882Format: DVDCollection: Pelican Bay
Interviews with prison activists, attorneys and staff of Pelican Bay used in "Short to the House" New College Performance and program regarding prison conditions 12/13/1997. Part 1
Pelican Bay Interviews Pelican Bay Interviews
Call Number: V 699Format: Mini DVCollection: Pelican Bay
Interviews with prison activists, attorneys and staff of Pelican Bay used in "Short to the House"
Pelican Bay Pelican Bay
Call Number: V 700Format: Mini DVCollection: Pelican Bay
Pelican Bay under Construction (no sound, poor video) Short to the House - includes interviews (audio only) of Pelican Bay prisoners, officials from Pelican Bay and the city of Crescent City, Ruth Gilmore.