The Berkeley History Room has your history!
New: Berkeley History Online
Clicking on this link will take you directly to Berkeley History Online, a subsection of the very large, statewide Online Archive of California. (Warning: by clicking here you will be leaving the Berkeley Public Library website.) The Berkeley History Online collection includes images of Berkeley from the 1870s through the 1990s. You can view these images in alphabetical order by title by selecting “view items” near the bottom of the page or by selecting “200 online items” in the left navigation area. To search the images by subject or keyword use the “search” option in the top navigation area (next to the words “ONLINE ARCHIVE OF CALIFORNIA”). Do not use the search box on the left (the “search within this document” feature) to search for images.
The Berkeley Public Library has long collected books on Berkeley, the Central Library's renovation has provided space for an expanded collection of historical materials, sure to be of interest to genealogists, researchers, students, scholars, and especially the historically curious.
The Berkeley History Room, on the second floor of Berkeley's Central Library, is open Tuesday, Friday and Saturday, 1pm-5pm.
Check out the wooden gates designed by local artist-craftsman Miles Karpilow.
The Berkeley History Room recently sponsored a series of free lectures led by Berkeley historian and teacher Charles Wollenberg and featuring local guests. Link to Berkeley, a City in History for the class text.
Items available in the Berkeley History Room:
- A near-complete set of Berkeley High's Olla Podrida
- Oakland-Berkeley city directories (1892 to 1943)
- Local telephone directories (1943 to the present)
- Berkeley City Council minutes back to 1930
- Berkeley Daily Gazette on microfilm from 1894 to 1983
- Blue and Gold yearbooks from the University of California
- Berkeley Sanborn maps (in print, on microfilm, and soon online)
- Near-complete runs of some hard-to-find local publications, including the Berkeley Barb, Tribe, Berkeley Insider, City
Miner, Berkeley Viewpoint, Berkeley Samisdat Review, and the CNA Newsletter
- Oral histories, city documents, local maps, brochures, pamphlets, clipping files (click here to see a list of clipping files subject headings in .pdf format), postcards, photographs, and videos.
- The Library's own publications, including "Fiction Set in Berkeley" and an index to the Berkeley Architectural Heritage
Association's calendars
- The War File, clippings and pamphlets on Berkeley in World War II
- The Swingle Collection (books, promotional circulars and broadsides, photographs and photographic negatives, ephemeral
items, manuscript materials) on the history and life of Berkeley from 1842 to 1942.
Berkeley History Room
Berkeley Public Library
2090 Kittredge St. (at Shattuck)
Berkeley, CA 94704
Open Tuesday, Friday and Saturday 1 PM - 5 PM
510-981-6212 during open hours
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