This post was updated Oct. 10 at 11:13 p.m.

The UCLA Library received a donation of a political cartoon collection valued at $4.2 million in September.

The collection, donated by Michael and Susan Kahn, contains more than one million political cartoons and caricatures originating between 1690 and 2022. The donation from the family also includes additional funding for classes and workshops focused on political cartoons.

Michael Kahn, who graduated from UCLA in 1970 with a degree in political science, said in a written statement that he chose UCLA as the home for his collection because of his commitment to the university and for the collections to be accessible to leading scholars.

“I wanted to repay my debt to UCLA and express my gratitude to it by sharing my life’s work with UCLA,” Kahn said in an emailed statement.

The political cartoon collection contains works from 59 countries and in 30 languages, according to the UCLA Library. It will be available digitally during the 2024-2025 academic year through the UCLA Library Special Collections.

Christopher Gilman, the digital curriculum program coordinator with the Digital Library Program, said he was involved in creating proposals that worked to integrate the collection into different programs within the UCLA Library and in academic instruction.

He added that items intended for academic use will be digitized and made available through BruinLearn activities and models.

He said the addition of the collection to the UCLA Library is incredibly important and beneficial for students as another form of communication to study.

“The political cartoons as a type of content are very relevant to today’s political discourses and to understand and be able to decode,” Gilman said. “To situate oneself as a citizen among these types of communication is an important skill for all students to have.”

Kahn also said in the emailed statement that the collection possesses valuable insight to the world as it has changed over time.

“To me, ultimately, political cartoons speak truth to power,” Kahn said in the written statement. “Today, we are faced with assaults on truth and timidity in the face of power. We need political cartoons to defend … truth and to protect our freedoms.”

The collection was donated in honor of Ginny Steel, the Norman and Armena Powell University Librarian who is retiring in December.

[Related: The university librarian since 2013, Virginia Steel will retire at the end of 2023]

Steel, who became the UCLA university librarian in 2013, said she was honored for the Kahns to have donated the collection in her name, adding that the collection unlocks an entirely new set of materials to engage with.

“At a time when political misinformation in the form of memes is proliferating online, cartoons invite readers to decode complex meanings and to draw insights from multiple academic disciplines,” Steel said.

Gilman added that he thought the donation was a thoughtful recognition of Steel’s work and highlighted her focus on open access materials, accessibility and increasing the global reach of the library’s collections department.

Kahn also said in the statement that the collection was the physical manifestation of his lifelong interest in political humor and politics, he said.

“I hope it will provide an opportunity for students and scholars and others to see the world through honest but critical eyes,” Kahn said in the written statement. “The collection can become a resource for those who want to learn about the truth about what really happened.”