Above: Naturalist Margaret Wood Bancroft collecting specimens in Baja California, circa 1930. The Research Library's Special Collections include several Bancroft scrapbooks and photographic collections.

Archives: institutional records and special collections.

Institutional records include administrative files and reports of directors; correspondence and professional papers of museum scientists, curators, and associates; museum publications; scrapbooks of newspaper and magazine clippings; biographical files on directors, trustees, staff, and students; and memorabilia.

The Archives also hold Special Collections that concern people, events, and research activities associated with the Museum. These include the Raymond M. Gilmore Collection on Marine Mammals and collections relating to scientists associated with the Museum such as botanists Ethel Bailey Higgins and Reid Moran, herpetologist Laurence Klauber, scientific publisher and collector Charles Orcutt, curator of birds and mammals Laurence Huey, paleontologist and geologist Anthony Wayne Vogdes, and others, along with the records of the Vermillion Sea Station research facility. Descriptions of our archival holdings can be found in the Library's catalog, and our special collections finding guides can be searched at the Online Archive of California.

Historic field notes from our Archives have been digitized and are available on the Internet Archive. These include collecting notes of Frank Stephens, Laurence M. Huey, Charles Russell Orcutt, and the field diaries of Kate Stephens.

Browse our Historic Field Notes on the Internet Archive