Los Angeles Public Library, Rare Books Room / Digitization & Special Collections Department

Our core rare book collections include California history, Mexicana, bullfighting, Pacific voyages, food and wine, costume, travel in North America, Europe and the Near East, history of the book and printing, ornithology and Native American culture and history. 

Our special collections include the Casey Fashion Plate Collection, the Tom Owen Collection of Bookplate Art, Japanese woodblock prints, California prints, artists' books, travel posters, the Menu Collection, the Paul Fritzche Collection of Culinary Literature, the Cookery Ephemera Collection, fruit crate labels, the Gladys English Collection of American Children's Book Illustration, the Behymer Opera Collection, the Charles F. Lummis Autograph Collection (over 700 signatures, poems, notes and original art from 19th to early 20th century notable figures), George A. and Florence A. Dobinson Letters (mainly correspondences), Beaudry Candy Company Archive (company records in ledgers, notes and handwritten recipes), personal photographs of Walter Henry Rothwell (first director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic), minutes, correspondences and notes of the Southwest Society and the Southwest Museum, L.A. Mayor Sam Yorty scrap books, Orra Eugene Monnette papers and the Los Angeles Resistance Collection (documents the non-cooperation with the Vietnam War draft).