The California Historical Society Collection: First Quarterly Update
The California Historical Society Collection represents one of the most substantial and meaningful acquisitions for the Stanford University Libraries. Announced in January 2025, the Libraries’ stewardship of what is now the California Historical Society Collection at Stanford is a complex merger of the unique materials, expert staff, and fundamental missions of two of California’s longstanding research libraries. The California Historical Society (CHS) was established in 1871, revitalized by C. Templeton Crocker in 1922, and recognized as California’s official state historical society in 1979. Its renowned collection, housed and displayed in a succession of four historic buildings in San Francisco from 1922 to 2024, has arrived at Stanford in its entirety.
“Nearly every significant event and resident community in the history of California is represented in this magnificent collection. Unpacked, its 600,000 items will occupy over three linear miles of shelving,” said Ida M. Green University Librarian Michael A. Keller. “Fortunately, our long-tenured staff, bolstered by the addition of the CHS archivists who know the collection best, is adept at accomplishing large-scale, multi-year projects.”
Three former CHS archivists deeply familiar with the institution and its holdings have been hired by the Stanford University Libraries and are key members of the transition team.
Frances Kaplan (left) is the former director of the library and collections at CHS, where she focused on reference and research services, community outreach, and partnerships with other archives and cultural heritage organizations. “Bringing the collection to Stanford was only the first step. Now, making it accessible here is our primary focus and there is a lot of work to do,” she said. “The CHS Collection comprises multiple formats and cataloging systems, all of which must be end-processed so that they are findable at the Stanford University Libraries.”
Together with CHS colleagues Debra Kaufman and David Krah, also now at Stanford, Kaplan collaborated with Glynn Edwards, assistant director of Special Collections, to survey the vaults at CHS and barcode and map every box during the move. “I worked one day a week in the Jessie Vault with the map cabinets and the Tower of Terror (an enormous stack of oversized journals)!” recalled Edwards, who is now training the CHS team on conservation and digitization workflows at Stanford.
Debra Kaufman, a photography specialist at CHS since 2007, facilitated requests for digital reproduction and publication permission as the rights and imaging coordinator. “My affection for the CHS collections is ceaseless. The never-ending discovery of its riches has been such a gift largely due to the varied reference requests from patrons,” she said. At the Libraries, Kaufman is working with Anna Lee, photography curator. “I am thrilled by how well CHS’s rich and eclectic photography collections complement our existing holdings,” Lee said. “CHS’s nineteenth-century photographs enhance the Libraries’ ability to contextualize important early historical periods for both California and the medium of photography. The CHS collection also creates depth in key subject areas, like San Francisco’s Chinatown, and breadth through resources designed to serve public audiences, such as the large, assembled photography collections.”
David Krah (left), an archivist since 2010, is no stranger to the Libraries. He has interned at CHS over the years and worked on the CHS-led grant project, California Ephemera, as well as many archival projects with the Libraries’ Department of Special Collections. Said David, “I’m excited to join Frances and Debra to bring the California Historical Society Collection to the Stanford and wider research community. I will be mainly functioning as a bridge between the collections expertise that Frances and Debra bring and the Stanford systems that will help the research community discover and use them.”
The Libraries’ rare books curator Benjamin Albritton and curator for American and British History and associate director Ben Stone are managing the integration of the CHS books and manuscripts into the catalog records and shelving of Special Collections. They pitched in during the move to unload 600 boxes of pamphlets!
“Combining the CHS and Stanford rare book collections increases our holdings by nearly twenty percent, a challenge from an infrastructure point of view,” Albritton said. “However, it forms one of the strongest centers for research into California history and California printing, and by extension Western history and printing, in the nation. By merging the collections, we have created opportunities and resources for scholarship that neither institution had before the merger and guaranteed a long and sustainable future for access to these unique materials.”
Added Stone, “The rich manuscript holdings that are found within the CHS collections offer amazing research opportunities for Stanford students and faculty, as well as external researchers: from materials on early California that Stanford was not collecting in its early years to materials such as the ACLU of Northern California records that complement Stanford's already deep holdings in collections that document struggles for civil rights in 20th-century California.”
Clearly, this impressive and talented team will have their hands full in the coming years. No one knows this more than Amelea Kim, assistant to the University Librarian, who coordinated the collection’s move. “My first impression was that the collection is IMMENSE,” said Amelea Kim, “I am excited about the future exhibits and research that might be done.” Kim continues to lead coordination for a team of nearly fifty library specialists tasked with ingesting materials and transferring digital content for rare books, manuscripts, artworks and artifacts, photographs, and historical maps.
The CHS Collection at Stanford will inform and illuminate scholarship for longer than we can imagine. The Libraries will gradually make available the CHS Collection at Stanford to researchers and the public as they are processed in our systems, starting with the most requested items.
This article is the first in a series of quarterly updates about the California Historical Society Collection at the Stanford University Libraries. More information can be found on the CHS website. Please direct all inquiries to: chscollection@stanford.edu.
For information about supporting the project, please call or write to Assistant University Librarian for External Relations Anh Ly at anhly@stanford.edu or (650) 512-6308.