California State Library

Official Tumblr account of the California State Library. (Seriously.)

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The CA State Library now offers online subject guides through the LibGuides platform! 🎉

Additional guides will continue to be added periodically.

Explore the subject guides at https://libraryca.libguides.com/

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Think you know your California places? Here's another photo from our collection where you can guess the decade and and location in CA. Let us know your answer in the comments!🐟

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Get ready for today’s eclipse with this 1873 book on the moon from our Sutro Library collection.

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Greg visited #Steinbeck Territory awhile back and got a cool tour of Doc Ricketts’ lab on Cannery Row with Monterey Public Library Director Brian Edwards. Thank you for hosting Greg while he’s on the go!

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This week’s shelf life shares some recent donations! Morris Roberts Wilkinson, born on April 17, 1825, in London Grove, Chester County, Pennsylvania, sailed on the ship Levant from Philadelphia around Cape Horn to California in 1849 to seek gold. The nine letters in this collection confirm that he was in California between at least 1849 and 1851 approximately, but he later returned to the East Coast. The original letters as well as their transcriptions were recently donated to the California History Section by Wilkinson’ great-great-granddaughter.

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Ever wonder what the inspiration was for Batman? Greg shares some great trivia tidbits from our 31st President’s reading habits and his personal author friend.

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Happy #bookloversday, from our shelves to yours! 📚💞

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Our furry coworker recommends some light reading for #InternationalCatDay. Be sure to take plenty of cat naps while you read!😺

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The Book of Cats: a chit-chat chronicle of feline facts and fancies, legendary, lyrical, medical, mirthful and miscellaneous by Charles Ross is a purrfect find from Sutro Library to honor #InternationalCatDay 😸

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Go fish! We love hanging out in the library, but some of our materials encourage you to enjoy the great outdoors too. Track your catches of 150 species with the CaliforniaDFW Fishing Passport. https://nrm.dfg.ca.gov/FileHandler.ashx?DocumentID=160598&inline

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Greg on the Go! On July 11 Greg attended the ribbon cutting for Santa Ana Public Library's New Hope Branch, featuring a brand new Innovation Lab designed to provide hands-on STEM learning for all ages. Congrats on the new library and we wish many happy visit from your community members and beyond!

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Greg’s latest reader series takes a look at the 44th President Barack Obama, the reader in chief. Check out the list here https://www.obama.org/stories/president-obama-summer-favorites-2026/

President Obama’s Summer 2026 Favorites

Find a new song of the summer or your next five-star read by checking out President Obama’s 2026 summer playlist and reading list.

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This episode of Shelf Life puts the spotlight on a CA Poet. In 1995, California poet Ruth de Menezes gifted the State Library a small collection of her poems and papers. The materials include signed and annotated copies of two of her published books, completed typescripts and drafts, and correspondence. De Menezes was born in 1910, in Watsonville, California, and raised in Eureka. Throughout her life she lived in Berkeley, San Francisco, and Southern California. Her poems first appeared in print when she was 19 years old, and she published several books between 1931 and 2000. De Menezes died in Culver City at the age of 93. Her 2003 obituary noted “In the last decade she was honored by having her books chosen to be in the archives of California State Library.” You’ll find the Ruth de Menezes papers, 1935-1995 in our California History collection.

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Think you know your California places? We're pulling photos from our collection where you can guess the decade and and where it's at in CA. First up, this lovely park scene. Good Luck!

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Greg on the Go! On May 15, 2026 Greg attended the ribbon cutting ceremony for the Imperial County Library Calipatria Branch. We are so glad Greg was on hand to celebrate this brand new library with the Calipatria community! Congrats and continued happy reading

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The sirens’ call for librarians will always be more books.

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Need a change from dumpster fires and doom scrolling to literal train wrecks? About 110 years ago, you could have witnessed the locomotive collision spectacle, a @castatefair event where people lined up to watch two trains collide. These images from the 1916 event features the railroad cars aptly named, the “California State Fair Special”. 🚂