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In front of us is the Sonoma County Library. The library was originally funded by the Andrew Carnegie Library fund. In 1966 the old building was taken down much to the dismay of many people in town because it was too small and replaced on the same site
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with this large excellent building. That attractive stone wall was built from stone used in the old building. Hello, I'm Jim Dickinson. I'm a volunteer in the Sonoma County History Room of the Santa Rosa Sonoma County Library. There are so many people
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in Santa Rosa and the County that don't know what the Sonoma County History Room is or that it even exists that we'd like to take you on a short visit to explain it all to you. Hopefully you'll come back and use and enjoy this room. Come
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on, let's go in. We're just inside the main entrance of the Sonoma County Library. The Sonoma County room is up these stairs on the mezzanine. It's staffed by both regular library staff and volunteers. It's open Tuesday 2 to 5, Wednesdays, 3 to 6 and Saturday 1
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to 5. Let's go upstairs and see what it looks like. Good afternoon, Audrey. Thanks for interrupting your work to talk with us. This is Audrey Herman who's in charge of this room among her other duties, she's doing an excellent job of gathering and collecting and organizing
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this large collection. Audrey joined the Sonoma County Library system just before this new building was built in 1966. She majored in history and has a degree in library science. Also, she is an accredited documents librarian, Audrey. I have to confess, I don't know what a documents
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librarian is. Would you please explain? That's the person who's in charge of acquiring government documents from the US government state of California and local government agencies. I had no idea we had such a set up here. It sounds very official and very interesting. Uh Audrey who's
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eligible to use this history room. Hm. Well, that's inclusive. Is there a charge or is a library card required? No, there's no fee and no library card required to use the room. Do you have any idea when the collection was begun? Well, it was begun. Uh
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This particular collection was begun in 1966 when the room opened by merging the county library collection and the Santa Rosa City Library collection. Are you still um adding to the collection? Yes, as new books are published, we add them to the collection. Good, hope you're gonna
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get Gay Bar and their book. Good. Um About how many books do you think are here? There are 1500 books in the room. Hm. Wonderful. Can you, uh how do you obtain uh, books and, and items to the new books we obtain like the book just
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as it's published, uh older material we acquire through gifts. Oh, so people can donate uh items to. Yes, they can. And are they tax deductible? Good. What do you think are the highlights of your collection? Uh Well, we have everything written by and about Luther Burbank
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and everything in this room has been indexed by name place subject so that anybody coming into the room can immediately go to the book he wants without going through all 1500 books. That sounds like it requires hours of time to me. Well, lots of people have
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been involved in getting this together. However, primarily you, I I really am amazed at what a wonderful collection it is and what a great job you've done. Many thanks Audrey for your time and information and thanks for uh to Mr and the whole staff because I
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know they've all been involved for providing us with this excellent facility and for the whole library. I think Santa Rosa and Sonoma County are very fortunate to have this outstanding library. Thank you. These are some of the 1500 books that Audrey just mentioned are in the
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collection. There are also map, uh a selection of maps, City and County. There are newspaper clippings and old photos. Uh the the clipping file and a photo file are very, very popular. There's a microfilm file that holds most of the old issues of the press Democrat
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and the Chronicle and some other old newspapers that I'd never heard of that card file in front of us is uh holds many individual names of county residents, not everyone by any means. And that's also another popular section, especially for people who are interested in uh
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tracing their ancestors. next to the file is an fascinating 18 77 atlas of Sonoma County. Uh I think the trip up here is, is worth it just to see that. Good afternoon, Louise. This is Louise Davis, one of our charming, knowledgeable and loyal volunteer staffers. Louise
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is one of these marvelous people who spends more time helping other people and other organizations than she does herself. She's currently very active in the Sonoma County Museum. Louise, what type of people use this room? How many types of people use? But uh mostly students, they
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come up here and uh ask questions and, and get material for their work at school from grade school right through the university. Very good. Glad to have them. Um What are some of the things you've learned about our county since you've been here? Believe me, I've
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had to learn a lot about the county since I have been working here. The very first day I was here. A man came and asked me about coal mining in Noma County. And that was off to a good start. I found a book and kept him
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quiet. And since then I've had to learn about coal, uh quick silver, some gold and silver. And then of course, we've had to learn about agricultural products and I've had to learn about those two starting in with hops years ago. And uh at one time, you
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know, we were the egg capital of the world. The eggs have gone. And uh so we've gone into apples and prudence and the leading a few nuts and yes, our leading in industries right now are uh grapes and wine making. But uh I have an interesting
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item here that uh in Alexander Valley, we are growing the Kiwi fruit as a, as a commercial product. Who would believe it. Um What is this interesting? Some young people were up here and asking about uh our earthquake fault. So I brought the seismograph charts out
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to show them uh how it looks normally to see these red here. And then when we had the 1969 earthquake, what a jump we had and then the little after shock. And uh they were quite interested in that. And uh I also showed them that uh
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we had the press Democrat uh published the day after the earthquake to show the damage that it did. And we've learned a great deal about earthquakes here. I hope so. Well, Louise, thanks for the good work you're doing. Um it's people like you that keep our
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community as good as it is and keeps all these wonderful activities going. Keep up the good words. Thank you. Thanks very much. Now that you have an idea of what's in this fascinating room and you have only a small idea. And believe me, there are many
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other things. Please come on up and use and enjoy this room, the staff and the whole library. Uh Mr say, uh everybody uh is always, are always helpful. They're always patient, they're interested in, in what you're doing. We're open on Tuesdays, 2 to 5, Wednesdays, 3
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to 6 and Saturdays 1 to 5. Thank you very much. Good night.
