Library Collections

Our K-12 Collection includes picture books, young readers, chapter books, and young adult fiction and non-fiction. The collection is located on the 2nd floor near the Makerspace. Picture books are shelved in the Family Study Room and primary school and young adult fiction and non-fiction are shelved just outside of the room. We typically purchase annual award-winning titles including Newbery Medal, Caldecott Medal, Pura Belpré award, and Stonewall Book award winners. 

You can search the K-12 Collection in OneSearch. 

You can help us keep the K-12 Collection current and vibrant by donating to the Children's Book Fund. 

The library is committed to preserving the history and culture of the North Bay. The North Bay Regional Collection provides a wide range of information about Sonoma, Lake, Marin, Medocino, Napa, and Solano counties. You'll find books published locally, written by local authors, and detailing the history, politics, and events of the North Bay region. Our Regional Collection is on the third floor of the library. Most books are for in-library use only, but duplicate copies can be borrowed for seven days. You can search the North Bay Regional Collection in OneSearch. 

Preserving the research output of the university is a central part of our mission in the library, and we make an effort to purchase and provide access to faculty publications in all disciplines. Faculty publications are shelved within our main academic collections. You can browse faculty publications on our Faculty Research and Creative Works site and you can search this collection in OneSearch. 

Faculty research is also preserved and made available in ScholarWorks, our institutional repository.

If you are a member of the SSU faculty and would like the library to purchase your most recent publication, please submit a purchase request or email the Collection Development Librarian. 

In addition to faculty publications, the library preserves and provides access to student master's theses, in accordance with the Thesis, Public Nature policy.

Theses published prior to 2015 are available in print and can be located on the third floor of the library. Theses published after 2015 are available in ScholarWorks. All theses can be searched in OneSearch. 

If you're looking for some recreational reading, we maintain a small collection of popular fiction and non-fiction. This collection is updated regularly with new bestsellers. You can find our Popular Reading collection in Lobo's Lounge. Stop by and find a book to enjoy today!

You can find tons of inspiration to get started in the Makerspace from the books and other materials available. We have books on robotics, electronics, digital fabrication, knitting, wearable electronics, jewelry making, and more. We also have issues of Make magazine going back to 2005. There are plenty of sources to help you learn to use the tools available and give you lots of great ideas. 

If you're facing down a research paper and you need a quick introduction to a topic that is new to you, check out the Very Short Introductions collection. Very Short Introductions provide concise and authoritative information on a wide range of topics to help you get up to speed quickly. We have Very Short Introductions in print (located across from the Information/Checkout Desk) and e-book formats. You can search all of our Very Short Introductions in OneSearch. 

We provide access to thousands of feature films, documentaries, television shows, short films, and more online and on DVD and VHS. You can view DVDs and VHS cassettes in the library at one our viewing stations or in our media viewing room. 

Explore our streaming media collections in the A-Z List of Databases. 

The library has an extensive LP collection, with over 13,000 titles. You can checkout LPs to listen to at home or you can listen to them in the library at one of our listening stations. You never know what you'll find when you browse the LP collection, from the quirky to the classic, and yes, you can search our LPs in OneSearch. 

You can read your favorite journals online using Browzine. Browzine is an app for your iPad, Android, or Kindle Fire table that lets you read library journals. Download the app, select the Sonoma State University Library, and login with your Seawolf ID. You'll have access to nearly all of the library's journals. You can add journals to your bookshelf, get notifications when new articles are published, read articles right from your tablet, and even save articles to read later. It's all free to you courtesy of the University Library.

Older periodicals may be available in print. Individual issues are generally bound into a single volume and stored in the Automated Retrieval System (ARS). To access bound issues of periodicals, you must place a request in OneSearch. If you are not sure how to request items from the ARS, the staff at the Information/Checkout Desk can always help. Bound issues are for in-library use only. You can scan or photocopy the articles you need at one of the scanning stations or copy machines.

If you want to request a single article from a bound issues, you can place a request for a digital copy. Our Resource Sharing staff will locate and scan the article you need and you will receive an email with a link to download the article. 

The library provides access to the Press Democrat in several databases, including Global Newsstream and the California Newspaper Collection. (Check out the image edition in California Newspaper Collection to see a reproduction of the print newspaper.) We also have back issues available via microfilm. We no longer subscribe to the print edition of the Press Democrat.

The library provides students, faculty, and staff FREE access to The New York Times when you create an account with your sonoma.edu email address. Activate Your Complimentary Access to NYTimes.com and type Sonoma State University in the text field to activate your free pass. Faculty will need to renew free access every four years.

Global Newsstream provides full-text access to hundreds of US and international news sources, including The New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Times of London. Coverage is generally current to today's paper for most titles still in print. 

The California Newspaper Collection provides full-text access to current editions of newspapers from across California, including the Press Democrat, the SF Chronicle, and the Sacramento Bee. Some titles include "image editions," which provide access to reproductions of the print edition. Coverage is generally current to today's paper for most titles still in print. 

You can access hundreds of historical newspapers from around the world, including The New York Times, SF Chronicle, Los Angeles Times, The Times of London, and many more. Check out our list of Newspaper databases in the A-Z List to explore all of our historical newspaper collections. 

Our coverage also includes alternative weeklies, indigenous newspapers, and newspapers and magazines from many ethnic, minority, and feminist presses across the US.

Your first stop for historical research related to the North Bay region is Special Collections. Special Collections include manuscripts, photographs, letters, collected papers, documents, media, journals and ledgers, original art, and a lot more. Many of these materials have been digitized. In order to work with materials in print, you will need to make an appointment. Contact Special Collections for more information. 

We subscribe to many digitized collections of primary source material, from libraries and archives around the world. You can explore all of our digital archival collections in our A-Z List. 

The Anthropological Papers, published continuously since 1907, are monographic volumes that include some of the great ethnographies of the 20th century, particularly on North American Indians. Several illustrious anthropologists published their work in the Anthropological Papers, as well as many past and present curators of the AMNH Division of Anthropology.

In the 1930s, behavioral scientists at Yale’s Institute of Human Relations started to develop a collection of cultural materials classified by subject at the paragraph-level enabling quick access to research materials. HRAF grew out of these efforts. The HRAF Collection of Ethnography, which was first built on paper in 1949 (converted to microfiche in the late 1950s), currently contains nearly one million pages of information on more than 350 cultures of the world, past and present. Each culture file contains a variety of source documents (books, articles, and manuscripts) that have been indexed and organized according to HRAF’s comprehensive culture and subject classification systems. Learn more about HRAF on their website. 

The Underground Press Syndicate (UPS) Underground Newspaper Collection contains microfilm reproductions of hundreds of magazines, newsletters, and bulletins from small, alternative presses from the sixties and seventies. The collection includes newsletters from civil rights organizations, environmental organizations, and regional presses from around the country. The basic set contains 476 microfilm reels of newspapers compiled by the Alternative Press Syndicate and microfilmed by Bell & Howell in the mid-1980s.