California's First Library
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California mission libraries played an integral role in daily life,
dispensing not only theological, but practical advice as well, in
matters such as agriculture, architecture, medicine, history, and
geography. California's "first library" at Mission Carmel was
compiled from among the handed-down and well-circulated volumes of
Mexico City's San Fernando Apostolic College (which administered the
Upper California missions), its Mexican missions, and its originally
Jesuit Lower California missions. By 1778, the library consisted of
around thirty books, arranged according to size on a new "bookcase with
four shelves from larger to smaller, lined in redwood." The library
grew to approximately fifty books by Junipero Serra's death in 1784,
and to 302 when it was first cataloged in 1800 by his successor, Rev.
Fermin de Lasuen. At that time each book was numbered at the top of
its spine, indicating bookcase number and shelf position. This mission's
1834 secularization inventory listed 179 titles (404 individual books),
which were soon dispersed after the mission's abandonment in 1852. The
majority were stored at various Monterey locations until 1949, when 229
of its original titles of the 1770-1842 library were returned. The library
now totals approximately 600 volumes, including the personal collection
of Monterey's pastors from 1850-1930, displayed in the niche on the right.
(Serra's Bible, pictured here, is described in detail where displayed,
in the large case in the last room before the gift shop)
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