CONNECT with the CityHervey Family Rare Book Room
The Hervey Family Rare Book Room houses the Wangenheim Rare Book Collection. With over 9000 items, the collection illustrates the development of the book through the ages, in all its aspects - the world of paper making, the art of book illustration, and the history of printing.
Planning Your Visit
To access materials located in the Hervey Family Rare Book Room for research, please contact the Special Collections Manager at mwnye@sandiego.gov or call at 619-236-5852.
View guidelines for visiting: 
Rare Book Room Protocol
Collection Highlights
Miniature Book Collection
The Wangenheim Rare Book Collection holds more than 500 miniature books
(List of holdings).
(List of holdings).
Complete Set of Edward S. Curtis Folios
This complete edition of Edward Curtis’ rare work The North American Indian, consist of volumes of illustrations and photographs chronicling traditional Native American culture.
Fore Edge Painted Book Collection
The Wangenheim Collection is home to more than 200 fore-edge painted books, a unique form of art work where the painted images on the book’s fore-edge is only visible when the pages are fanned. View a digitized selections on SDPL Digital Archive.
4000 year old Cuneiform Tablet Collection
The Babylonian clay tablet collection contains clay tablets inscribed with cuneiform characters, ca. 2300 BCE. Cuneiform script is one of the earliest known systems of writing emerging from Mesopotamia. View a digitized selections on SDPL Digital Archive.