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Archival
Center Library
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The collection
that comprises the library of the Archival Center was begun
in 1962 in order to allow scholars to "read around"
the letters, documents and other historical materials forming
the nucleus of the Church's memory bank in Southern California.
What
began as a modest accumulation of reference books has evolved
into one of the most comprehensive and utilized libraries
of Californiana and related topics. Initially housed in quarters
at Queen of Angels Seminary, the library was moved several
times - to Saint Catherine's Military School in Anaheim, to
San Buenaventura Mission in Ventura county and, finally, to
a newly built archival facility in 1981.
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While
the greatest number of tomes in the collection were acquired from
Dawson's Book Shop in Los Angeles, probably every other major book
dealer in the country has contributed one or more titles to what has
become a truly significant reference collection. The pattern of holdings
is anything but haphazard. From the very outset, the purpose has been
to gather any and all titles related to the Catholic Church in California. |
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Over
the years, several substantial gifts of books have been added to the
collection, the most valuable of which are the 887 volumes from Carrie
Estelle Doheny's collection of Californiana which came in 1987. Other
substantial donations include volumes from Peter T. Conmy, Robert
Covey, Robert G. Cowan, Richard Curtiss, Msgr. Lawrence Donnelly,
Marie Harrington, and Edward D. Lyman. |
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In
1993, Sister Mary Rose Cunningham, associate archivist for the Archdiocese
of Los Angeles, began cataloguing the books. When unable to locate
the appropriate Library of Congress number, she was assisted by the
gracious staff of the Huntington Library in San Marino. The admittedly
awkward system of shelving books by categories rather than by numbers
avoids the practice of disfiguring the volumes with numbers affixed
to the spines. |
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To
date, there are 10,213 books in the collection which continues to
grow as new titles are published and old ones surface in catalogues.
This writer long ago embraced the notion expressed by Lawrence Clark
Powell that "the collecting of books is... the summum bonum of
the acquisitive desire, for the reason that books brought together
by plan and purposely kept together are a social force to be reckoned
with, as long as people have clear eyes and free minds." |
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Among
the categories of books in the library are those relating to Baja
and Alta California, California Places and Persons,Western
America and the Gold Rush, Los Angeles and San Francisco, Ranchos
and Islands, Travel Accounts, Native Americans, Outstanding Biographies,
History of the Church, Vatican Council II, American Catholica, California
Catholica, |
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Mexican
Ecclesial, Education, Religion in General, the Pious Fund, Fine Press
Books, Sets and Series and the California Missions. |
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The
books in this library do not circulate but must be consulted in the
reference room of the Archival Center in Mission Hills. |
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Reflections
on the library attached to the Archival Center can be found in a book
published in 1998 under the title The Literary High Spots of Mission
Hills, California. |
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