Do you have precious family photos and documents stored in your closet, basement, or even on your phone? What about family scrapbooks, albums, or bibles in the attic? Learn from SFPL conservators and librarians how to keep your collections safe so they can be enjoyed by you and your loved ones in the years to come.
We’ll share tips for avoiding and addressing mold outbreaks, handling and storing damaged books, maintaining born-digital collections, and more. We’ll have handouts and resources to share, and there will be plenty of time for questions.
This workshop is presented by conservators from the SFPL Preservation Unit and librarians from the SFPL Digi Center in conjunction with Preservation Week 2025.
A monthly social club based in San Francisco for mail artists, letter writers and people who love the USPS. If this sounds like you, then you've come to the right place! The Correspondence Co-op is a place for like-minded folks to meet other artists in a casual setting, make some mail art and share ideas. Sponsored by Book Arts & Special Collections.
Join us for a talk by John Prestianni, local calligrapher, lettering artist, long-time member of the Friends of Calligraphy and founding editor of Alphabet.
Presented by the Friends of Calligraphy in association with the Book Arts & Special Collections Center.
The San Francisco–Oakland Bay Bridge is six months older, four times as long, and twice as busy as the Golden Gate Bridge. Why then has it seemingly been featured in far fewer films? Watch the Bay Bridge reclaim its starring role in scenes from over three dozen feature films -- some familiar, many much more obscure -- including "Shadow of the Thin Man "(1941), "Experiment in Terror" (1961), "George of the Jungle" (1997) -- and, of course, everyone's favorite directional mistake, "The Graduate" (1967).
Among the hundreds of periodicals in Book Arts & Special Collections is a new arrival, BLAG: Better Letters Magazine. We’ve been drooling over this wonderful publication for a while and finally had the opportunity to subscribe. Here’s the first issue to arrive and to be enjoyed by everyone. A favorite piece is “Secret Signs in San Francisco’s Tenderloin,” and there’s a lovely piece about our friends down the street, Letterform Archive. Lots of visual treats on sign painting, graphic design, hand painted advertisements, ghost signs, book reviews; and a ton of inspiration. Better letters, indeed!
For well over 100 years, newspaper comic strips and comic books have been a source of entertainment for all ages. The wit, wisdom, absurdity, and satirical observations of comic characters have brought comfort to readers when the world has turned upside down. Scholars have remarked that in Victorian comic magazines "a relatively freer capacity to use potentially disconcerting material is to confirm that more about the real worldslips through in the illustrations of the comic magazines than in those of the news magazines." And so it goes with American comic art.
The Real World: Comic Art from the Schmulowitz Collection of Wit & Humor is a very brief survey showcasing comic art beginning with mostly European forerunners, progressing through the early days of newspaper comic strips; the golden age of the 1930s-1950s; racial integration of newspaper syndicates; women cartoonists; and those darn animals! Original comic strip panels, comic strip reprints, and books featured here are a fraction of the materials waiting to be discovered in the Schmulowitz Collection of Wit & Humor (SCOWAH).
In conjunction with the exhibition, the Art, Music, & Recreation Center presents themed film screenings during the month of May. All films are shown at 12 noon in the Main Library’s Koret Auditorium. Coming up: May 1: Popeye; May 22: The Addams Family; May 29: Over the Hedge.
Rooted in 19th-century political pamphlets and 1930s science-fiction fanzines, zines have emerged into a powerful medium for independent expression and cultural exchange. The DIY ("do it yourself") spirit of the 1970s and '80s fueled the creation of an array of diverse zines, spanning themes from punk music to skate culture and queer identity. Characterized by their underground nature, zines have played a pivotal role in amplifying marginalized voices and documenting social and political movements while fostering a sense of community by challenging dominant narratives.
In capturing the creativity and energy of the movements they represent, these printed works serve as time capsules that spotlight key cultural and artistic trends.
From the George M. Fox Collection of Early Children's Books