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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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”. 🚂

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Greg’s TBR pile is pretty eclectic! He shares here about reading a classic horror novel Hell House by Richard Matheson.

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Come with us and you’ll be in a world of history and imagination! Teaming up with the CA State Capitol Museum for a short history of the State Library

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Anne Hadden was the first county librarian of Monterey County and a significant figure in the county library movement in California. Born in Ireland in 1874, she immigrated with her family to California in 1890. Her storied career began as Palo Alto's first city librarian in 1901, followed by two years in Sacramento working under James Gillis at the California State Library. In 1913 Hadden became first county librarian of Monterey County, a position she held for the next 16 years. During her time in Monterey, she established 126 remote county library branches, often traveling via horseback or on foot to reach the most remote areas and connect library resources with residents. The Anne Hadden Papers 1908-1953 collection is housed in the California History Section and consists of correspondence, research notes and materials, photographs, and ephemera relating to Anne’s life and work.

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Picture this- Shelf Life captures on camera this large Rochester Optical Premo B box folding camera from the late 1890s being processed in our preservation department.

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Are you in your feels — World Cup over, autumn still so far away? Add this 1954 doo-wop single 'I Cried' by the Velvets to your playlist. This red record from Red Robin Records is part of our Sutro Library collection.