Santa Monica Public Library

The Santa Monica Public Library Image Archives contain historical photographs, postcards, and slides documenting the city's changing landscape and architecture as well as the commercial enterprises that shaped the development of the City of Santa Monica. The Archives include surrounding areas such as Pacific Palisades, Venice and Malibu among others. As early as 1875, Santa Monica's beaches attracted visitors from other areas, making tourism and transportation key local industries. The Archives include many images of resort hotels, bathhouses, amusement piers, the Long Wharf (intended Port of Los Angeles), Southern Pacific Railroad, and Douglas Aircraft, along with bearchgoers, shopkeepers, classes of schoolchildren, founding families, Spanish land grant holders, and other historically significant people. All of the Archives' images are available in digitized format on the web from the Library's digital collection site, Imagine Santa Monica, https://digital.smpl.org/. The Library has the Santa Monica Outlook newspaper (1875- 1998) available on microfilm at the Main Library. Early years of the Outlook (1875-1920) are also available from the Imagine Santa Monica site. The Library's staff has selectively indexed and annotated articles published in the newspaper between 1950 and 1998. Since the demise of the Outlook, the Library's staff has indexed the local information published in the weekly "Our Times" section of the Los Angeles Times and is currently indexing the Santa Monica Mirror. Both are also available on microfilm. The newspaper indexes are available online from Imagine Santa Monica, http://digital.smpl.org.

Santa Monica Public Library is a participant in the LAAS and ONE Archives Hidden Histories project