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Archival Center Collections
The collection that comprises the library of the Archival Center was begun in 1962 in order to allow scholars to "read around" the letters, documents and other historical materials forming the nucleus of the Church's memory bank in Southern California.
Archival Center Library
The Archival Center LibraryWhat began as a modest accumulation of reference books has evolved into one of the most comprehensive and utilized libraries of Californiana and related topics. Initially housed in quarters at Queen of Angels Seminary, the library was moved several times - to Saint Catherine's Military School in Anaheim, to San Buenaventura Mission in Ventura county and, finally, to a newly built archival facility in 1981.
While the greatest number of tomes in the collection were acquired from Dawson's Book Shop in Los Angeles, probably every other major book dealer in the country has contributed one or more titles to what has become a truly significant reference collection. The pattern of holdings is anything but haphazard. From the very outset, the purpose has been to gather any and all titles related to the Catholic Church in California.
Over the years, several substantial gifts of books have been added to the collection, the most valuable of which are the 887 volumes from Carrie Estelle Doheny's collection of Californiana which came in 1987. Other substantial donations include volumes from Peter T. Conmy, Robert Covey, Robert G. Cowan, Richard Curtiss, Msgr. Lawrence Donnelly, Marie Harrington, and Edward D. Lyman.
In 1993, Sister Mary Rose Cunningham, associate archivist for the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, began cataloguing the books. When unable to locate the appropriate Library of Congress number, she was assisted by the gracious staff of the Huntington Library in San Marino. The admittedly awkward system of shelving books by categories rather than by numbers avoids the practice of disfiguring the volumes with numbers affixed to the spines.
To date, there are 10,213 books in the collection which continues to grow as new titles are published and old ones surface in catalogues. This writer long ago embraced the notion expressed by Lawrence Clark Powell that "the collecting of books is... the summum bonum of the acquisitive desire, for the reason that books brought together by plan and purposely kept together are a social force to be reckoned with, as long as people have clear eyes and free minds."
Among the categories of books in the library are those relating to Baja and Alta California, California Places and Persons,Western America and the Gold Rush, Los Angeles and San Francisco, Ranchos and Islands, Travel Accounts, Native Americans, Outstanding Biographies, History of the Church, Vatican Council II, American Catholica, California Catholica, Mexican Ecclesial, Education, Religion in General, the Pious Fund, Fine Press Books, Sets and Series and the California Missions.
The books in this library do not circulate but must be consulted in the reference room of the Archival Center in Mission Hills.
Reflections on the library attached to the Archival Center can be found in a book published in 1998 under the title The Literary High Spots of Mission Hills, California.
Biblioteca
The BibliotecaIn early 1968 the old Bibliotheca Montereyensis-Angelorum Dioeceseos was removed from storage and transferred to Queen of Angels Seminary, where it was catalogued and categorized. The historic library was eventually placed on permanent display in a newly restored room of the adjacent Mission San Fernando. The provenance of the Bibliotheca is fascinating. Though most of the books had long been in California, it was only in the years after 1842 that they found their way into the theological library formed by Bishop Francisco Garcia Diego y Moreno for the area’s initial seminary.
In early 1968 the old Bibliotheca Montereyensis-Angelorum Dioeceseos was removed from storage and transferred to Queen of Angels Seminary, where it was catalogued and categorized. The historic library was eventually placed on permanent display in a newly restored room of the adjacent Mission San Fernando. The provenance of the Bibliotheca is fascinating. Though most of the books had long been in California, it was only in the years after 1842 that they found their way into the theological library formed by Bishop Francisco Garcia Diego y Moreno for the area’s initial seminary.
What books had been gathered from the missions and private donors were moved from Santa Barbara, in 1844, to quarters provided at nearby Santa Ines for the newly autonomous Seminary of Our Lady of Refuge. During its four decades at Santa Ines, the collection occupied a large room in the central part of the old mission building, not far from the two-story adobe housing the Seminary proper.
When the seminary’s prospectus was broadened to include non-clerical aspirants, the college, later placed under the patronage of Our Lady of Guadalupe, was moved to another site about a mile and a half from the mission, on the vast 36,000 acre ranch. While students continued to have access to the Bibliotheca, the seminary library was never transferred to the new location.
No specific check-list of titles for any given Period has been discovered, though an inventory drawn up in 1853, mentions volumes as belonging to the library. In 1874, Hubert Howe Bancroft visited Santa Ines and recorded seeing about 600 tomes in the Bibliotheca. Sometime between November, 1882 and the spring of 1884, Bishop Francis Mora had the library moved to his residence in Los Angeles, adjacent to Saint Vibiana's Cathedral. When a new three-story edifice was erected, in 1888-1889, the books were placed in specially designed quarters off a tunnel-way connecting the rectory with the tower of the church.
The Bibliotheca Montereyensis-Angelorum Dioeceseos remained at the cathedral, until 1933, when an earthquake so damaged the building that it had to be completely replaced. At that time, the collection was taken to the diocesan preparatory seminary, located in Hancock Park. Accommodations were made for storing the library in the basement area immediately beneath the central foyer. From that time onwards, the Bibliotheca ceased to be utilized as a learning tool.
Shortly after the opening, at Saint John's Seminary, of the Edward Laurence Doheny Memorial Library, on September 22, 1940, the Bibliotheca Montereyensis-Angelorum Dioeceseos was again crated and transported the sixty-five miles to Camarillo. There, it was placed in two caged rooms on the bottom level of the reference stacks. Sporadic attempts were made to acquisition the collection and a number of obviously valuable tomes were indeed assimilated into the active seminary library. Several of the more attractively bound book sets were used to fill out the shelves left vacant in the seminary’s parlor by the removal of a large collection of rock specimens.
On February 7, 1968, authorization was obtained from chancery officials of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles to reactivate the Bibliotheca Montereyensis-Angelorum Dioeceseos as an historical collection. The books were carefully cleaned, repaired and arranged into the ten-category system used at the Apostolic College of San Fernando in Mexico City. Post-mission accession marks were removed and mutilated or faded bookplates replaced. In the later months of 1968, the Bibliotheca Montereyensis-Angelorum Dioeceseos, once the largest and most complete of the mission libraries, emerged from the shadows of another era.
Further information on this library can be found in a book issued in 1969 under the title A Bibliophilic Odyssey.
Collection Summary
Aside from other holdings, there are items at the Archival Center on a myriad of subject headings, arranged alphabetically by categories, a sampling of which would be:
- Parochial Correspondence – inside and outside Los Angeles
- General File, A though Z
- Religious Men and Women, A through Z
- The Tidings, 1895 to present (also on microfilm)
- Episcopal Papers, Garcia Diego through Mahony, 1840 onwards
- Deceased Priests, A through Z
- Insurance Papers
- Colleges, Universities and Seminaries, Miscellaneous correspondence
- Peter T. Conmy Historical Collection
- Francis Osborne Collection (newspaper and journal clippings)
- Parochial Commemorative Books
- Educational and Institutional Commemorative volumes
- Miscellaneous California Catholic Commemorative volumes
- Estelle Doheny Collection, background and story plus 7 volumes of catalogs
- Prominent Persons, A through Z
- Catholic Societies, A through Z
- Other Catholic Newspaper Collections, The Monitor, Monterey Observer and The Leader
- Saint Vibiana Cathedral, 1876-1996
- Our Lady of Angels Cathedral, 1997 onwards
- Miscellaneous Legal Papers, J. Wiseman Macdonald
- Bishops’ Desk Calendars, 1915 onwards
- The Photograph Morgue of The Tidings,1942-1974
