It’s no King Tut’s tomb, but the History Room at the Berkeley Public Library is worth a look. Due to budget cuts you need an appointment to visit the room, but the library staff let me take these photos so you can get a preview (they want to publicize it). Scroll down for high-res images of the shelves.
These doors were made by a local woodworker when the library was renovated in 2002.
The room is full of great furniture, maps, and Berkeley-related photos. Plus many large file cabinets full of Berkeley-related news clippings.
Below are photos of all the shelves – click on any image to enlarge.
Boards and commissions
Community
Waterfront, hospitals, homeless
City budgets and government stats
Planning and development
School Yearbooks
The University
Trains, streetcars, slang, science
Berkeley-related cookbooks
Heritage and history
Berkeley-related poetry
Business directories
Novels
Newsletters
Phone books
Nonfiction
Protest, change and pictoral history
Barb and Tribe
Cards and maps
And finally, behind glass doors – this is a large collection of Berkeley related ephemera sold to the library by a collector named Swingle. Unclear how much of it has yet been looked through and catalogued.
P.S. And one last item… the original plaque from the 1905 library building, funded by Andrew Carnegie on land donated by Shattuck’s widow Rosa:
