Regional Academic and Public Archival Resources
California State Archives — A repository for California State permanent governmental records and other materials documenting California history.
Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender Historical Society of Northern California — Founded in 1985, the mission of the GLBT Historical Society is to collect, preserve and promote an active knowledge of the history, arts, and culture of sexually diverse communities in Northern California and beyond.
Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace. Library — One of the world's leading research libraries for advanced study of problems of political, economic, and social change in the twentieth (20th) century. Began in 1919 with an effort to document the causes and consequences of World War I.
San Francisco State University Library Labor Archives and Research Center — The Labor Archives collection includes materials from the counties surrounding San Francisco Bay, including Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin, San Francisco, San Mateo, and Santa Clara.
Stanford University Libraries. Department of Special Collections — Provides access for researchers to unique photography, map, poster, and print collections.
University of California, Berkeley. Bancroft Library -—Archival and rare book collection, specializing in the history of western North America, particularly the western plains states to the Pacific Coast (with an emphasis on California and Mexico); fine printing of all periods and places; University Archives; regional Oral History Office; Mark Twain Papers; etc. Over 300,000 volumes, 55 million transcripts, 2 million pictures and portraits, 22,000 maps and atlases, plus microforms, recordings, pamphlets, and motion pictures. Over 1200 journal titles.
University of California, Santa Cruz. Special Collections & Archives — Archival holdings range from manuscripts and rare books to local ephemera, works of art and audio and visual material. The collections afford opportunities for interdisciplinary research, particularly in fields such as the history of printing and book arts; modernism in art, literature, and photography; women’s and community studies; and local history.
Preserving Your History Brochure Series — A series of brochure resources for the general public produced by the Society of California Archivists establishing guidelines for preserving photographs and papers as well as an introduction to the methodology of historical research.
Digital Collection Resources
Caliphere: California Digital Library — More than 150,000 digitized items — including photographs, documents, newspaper pages, political cartoons, works of art, diaries, transcribed oral histories, advertising, and other unique cultural artifacts — reveal the diverse history and culture of California and its role in national and world history. Calisphere's content has been selected from the libraries and museums of the UC campuses, and from a variety of cultural heritage organizations across California. See the list of contributing institutions.
The Online Archive of California — A searchable online union database of finding aids to various archival collections. This database includes links to repositories from many institutions statewide, and is continuing to expand. Included are several CSU and UC libraries special collections and archives.
Silicon Valley History Online — This gateway to the major historical resources of the Santa Clara Valley provides digitized images of photographs, maps, letters, postcards, manuscripts, scrapbooks, menus, programs from events, and many other materials from seven local archives, museums, and libraries, including Special Collections and the California Room. The time periods covered are pre-European contact through the present, covering the major themes of agriculture, education, people, technology, transportation and urban life. This gateway was made possible by a generous grant from the California State Library through the Library Services and Technology Act.