Written by Gabrielle S. Bates
Edited by Sereen Suleiman and Lauren Kime
Nestled among the books and projects at the San Jose Public Library is a gem of history: the California Room. This place offers a glimpse of the history of Silicon Valley long before tech companies began building roots here.
In 1905, the library had a lithe section of California history comprising travel books, history books, and regional poets. It wasn’t until 1970 that this section blossomed into its own room. The librarians then focused on expanding their collection to be as layered as possible. This collection is not allowed to circulate as there are several preservation rules in place. Fortunately, it can be accessed digitally at the link below:
http://digitalcollections.sjlibrary.org/cdm/ourcollections?t=0
Let’s explore a few of these collections and hopefully, they will pique your interest.
Since the San Jose area is widely known as Silicon Valley, the hub of startups, it is fitting to have a Silicon Valley Collection. This archive dates back from the mid-80s, and there are approximately 700 boxes of documents chronicling 600 tech companies’ beginnings, including companies such as 3Comm, Adobe, and Hewlett Packard. These boxes are a mixture of annual reports, promotional materials, photos, newsletters, and more. There are some notable exceptions, for example, anything related to Apple is housed at the Stanford Silicon Valley Archives. While complementary, the Stanford SV Archive only focuses on the beginnings of Silicon Valley.
Maybe tech startups are of little interest to you, but there are also historic maps, photographs, and postcards that are categorized within their own individual collections. Over 1,000 maps are housed here, dating from 1870 to 1980. The photographs collected come from two primary sources, one of which was Clyde Arbuckle, the late San Jose historian. These collections focus mostly on San Jose and the Santa Clara Valley.
If you have any family members who have lived in Santa Clara County, you might be interested to know there is a Yearbook Collection. It contains yearbooks from local middle schools, high schools, and universities. This collection is not complete and could use the aid of the public. If you know someone with a yearbook, the San Jose Public Library will accept the donation and forward it to the archives. Feel free to check out their list.
One of the more personal aspects of this collection is the Historic Books and Journals, and these books date from 1767 to 1910. One of the highlights is a handwritten book detailing the trek to California in Spring 1852.
As for those who are interested in promoting storytelling from local family members, mention Frontier Village. Between 1961-1980, South San Jose actually housed an amusement park. The theme was a western village, with Hanna-Barbera cartoon characters as tour guides and entertainment. The park was closed, however, when it could not get approval for additional development plans, and the land it was located on became increasingly valuable. Currently, this land is part of the Hayes mansion.
A unique aspect of the California Room is that anyone can donate items if they might hold historical value. This is evident when scrolling through the collection database. There are art pieces ranging from watercolors to sculptures from past local artists. A printed ephemera collection would be a scrapbooker’s dream. It consists of vintage handbills, posters, magazine articles and more. As technology continues to evolve, the value of these simple papers increases. There is a great need to maintain and curate these sorts of local historical collections, and failing to do so will lead to them being lost forever to future generations.
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