Stockton-San Joaquin County Public Library
Special Collections
Local History Collection
Local History is a non-circulating, closed stack collection composed of significant works of local importance. It is housed at the Cesar Chavez Central Library on the second floor. The emphasis of the collection is on Stockton, California and San Joaquin County. (See also, Stockton History as a Hot Topic.)
Some special items in the collection include the scrapbooks of Harriet Chalmers Adams and also her National Geographic articles from the early 1900's.
There is also a vertical file of clippings about Stockton and San Joaquin County.
Government Documents Partial Depository Library Collection
The Library is one of the oldest federal document depositories in California, having been designated in 1884. The rich collection covers a wide range of subjects, especially statistics, business, and agriculture, with an emphasis on California. The selective depository collection is housed at the Cesar Chavez Central Library in the Storage Services Section on the first floor.
An index of many government documents, including much of the Library's collection, is maintained by the U.S. Government Printing Office.
Genealogy Collection
The Genealogy Collection at the Cesar Chavez
Central Library consists
of over 1,500 reference books and 175 genealogy magazines of which a
dozen titles are currently received. Emphasis in the collection is on
United States research, though there are some general guides for doing
genealogy in other countries.
The library owns microfilm of the California federal census from 1850 through 1920 and the 1852 state census. A preponderance of the collection was donated to the Library by the San Joaquin Genealogical Society, which also gives periodic workshops in the Library.
The Genealogy Collection is supplemented by:
- The Library's general collection that includes the California Death Index from 1940 to 1994.
- State Library microfilm of the California Information File (an index to California local history at the State Library in Sacramento).
- Indexes to San Francisco newspapers from 1850 to the present.
- County histories for all California counties.
- A large federal government documents collection that includes the American State Papers on disputed federal land claims and the War of the Rebellion collection of documents from the Civil War.
- In library access to the Ancestry Library Edition genealogical database.
- Links to numerous genealogy web pages.
- San Joaquin County Gen Web: connections to many area Internet resources of use to genealogists and family researchers.
World Language Collections
The Cesar Chavez Central Library maintains large, fully cataloged collections of books, periodicals, music CDs, DVDs, books on tape, books on CD, cassettes and videos in Spanish, Chinese, and Vietnamese and is building book collections in Hmong, Khmer, Lao, and Philippine languages.
The Central Library also has a large, cataloged collection of Japanese books.
The Central Children's Section supports book collections in all of the above languages. All eleven branch libraries in the system and the Mobile Library have Spanish language collections of varying sizes; the largest are maintained at the Maya Angelou Southeast Library/Biblioteca, and the Tracy Branch Library.
The M. K. Troke Library also has collections of Chinese and Vietnamese language books.
The Tracy Library has Hindi materials.
The Library catalog has a PowerSearch feature with a language option that focuses a search to materials in any of the above languages.
Library Professional Collection
Located in the Library Administration area of the Cesar Chavez Central Library, the 1200+ volume Professional Collection of library science materials and 50 current professional journals is available to staff and by request to 49-99 Cooperative Library System members and other librarians, library school students and to any patrons interested in the field. The collection's titles have been included in the library catalog and may be searched by subject, author, title or keyword.
The holding location of these materials in the catalog is Chavez Central Library, Professional Collection, which as noted above is in the Library Administration area.
Collection strengths include library public relations, administration and management, collection development, adult/reference/children's services, automation and outreach.
Cady Collection
Miss Gertrude Cady gave the library money to buy books in memory of her niece, Jo Anne Sartini, who died when she was a little girl. These funds were used to purchase one copy of each year's Newbery Award Winner and Caldecott Award Winner (the most distinguished book of children's fiction and picture book illustrations for a given year) to be housed in the Central Library in a permanent reference collection.
The non-circulating Cady collection is located in the Children's Services Section display case with pictures of Miss Cady as a young woman, Jo Anne as a little girl and some of Jo Anne's own favorite books. Miss Cady later gave more money to the Central Library, the interest of which is used to purchase circulating, browsing non-fiction, picture books, poetry and fairy tales. These books have added much to the richness of the Central Children's collection.
Subject Index to Picture Books
This selective subject guide to children's picture books held by the Stockton - San Joaquin County Public Library is available in print format at all branches and in the Children's Services Section of the Central Library. It is designed to help patrons locate books on a specific topic for younger children. The index is continually updated to include new titles.
Photo Credits: Captain Charles Weber portrait detail from the collection at the Chavez Library; family portrait detail, "RDG," and passport photo by Kryten at flickr.com - some rights reserved; close up of Spanish text, "Lectura," photo by Manel at flickr.com - some rights reserved; Perceptions of Libraries and Information Resources, cover photo courtesy of mstephens7 at flickr.com - some rights reserved.