The library serves over 4,000 visitors each year and is open 35 hours per week. Our collections consist of 27,000 books, 12,000 volumes of bound periodicals, 100 ongoing periodical subscriptions, over 27,000 auction and sales catalogs, 175 linear feet of clipping files, photographs, scrapbooks, rare art periodicals with original lithographs, CD-ROMS, software, and videos.

To maintain our collections and provide service to our many readers, we rely on the generosity of our donors as well as on grants and a portion of the museum's general operating budget. Areas within the library have been dedicated by contributions in honor of Philip L. Gildred, of Dominic and Rosa Alessio, and of the Alessio Brothers.

Hours for our Members

Use of the library is a privilege of museum membership. We are open to our members on a walk-in basis Tuesdays through Fridays from 10:00 a.m. to 12:00 noon and from 1:00 to 4:00 p.m., closing for major holidays.

This is a research collection. Circulation is limited to museum staff and docents only. We are open to museum members as a reading library only.

Collection Strengths

Our library holdings reflect our status as a general art museum with broad collecting interests. Our historical strengths are in the areas of Asian, American, and European art, especially Spanish Baroque and the Italian Renaissance. Catalogues raisonnes on artists represented in the museum's permanent collection are the cornerstone of the library's collection. We are the only library in this region with extensive materials related to connoisseurship, auctions and sales, and the art market.

We hold unique materials for research on obscure artists and works of art. We also collect professional materials in the area of museum studies.

Recently, we have devoted attention to strengthening our selection of materials on 20th California artists; modern and contemporary Latin American artists; 18th- through 20th- century American artists, including African-American and folk/naive/outsider artists; and prints and printmaking.

For our staff, docents, and museum members, as well as for visiting students, scholars, and arts professionals, the primary utilization of the library's resources is in two broad areas:

• research on the museum's permanent collection and traveling exhibitions
• connoisseurship and research on privately owned art.

Electronic Resources

Our online catalog provides users with powerful keywork searching, making our book collection highly accessible. As a special feature, notes have been added to the online catalog to lead readers to citations and reproductions of the museum's own works of art in library books--search on the acronym SDMA to find these notes.

CD-ROMs allow us to offer digitized information to all library users without incurring any further fees. Of our growing CD-ROM collection, the most popular resource is Art Index, purchased for us this year by our neighbors at the Putnam Foundation/Timken Museum of Art. Other frequently-used CD-ROM titles include the Art Sales Index, Oxford English Dictionary, MicroSoft Art Gallery, and A Passion for Art (the Barnes Collection).

Library Instruction and Information

Bibliographic instruction and library orientation sessions for individual members or groups are available on request. We look forward to helping you learn to use the library's rich resources. Please contact James Grebl, library manager at (619) 696-1959 or by email, , for more information.

Back to Top