A white building with numerous pillars and a spanish tile roof with a green lawn in front.

Library

The Huntington Library is one of the world’s great independent research libraries, with more than 11 million items spanning the 11th to the 21st century.

Every year, researchers from over 30 countries make more than 20,000 visits to the Library’s reading rooms, and thousands more remote researchers make use of the Library’s virtual services and digital collections. Some 75 Library staff members play a critical role in cultivating and expanding access to the collections, creating new opportunities for discovery and engagement, and ensuring that collections are preserved for the future.

Four exceptional collections have joined The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens through the generosity of the Library Collectors’ Council, a group of supporters who help fund the purchase of new items for the institution’s archives.

Columnist Gustavo Arellano writes in the Los Angeles Times, “Gloria Molina, you were always a chingona. L.A. will miss you.” The former LA supervisor is an absolute badass, no question.

On the occasion of winning The Huntington's 2023 Shapiro Book Prize for Happy Dreams of Liberty: An American Family in Slavery and Freedom, R. Isabela Morales discusses the significance of writing family history, the challenges of tracing the lives of enslaved people, and the incredible cache of unpublished letters and legal documents that forms the archival core of her book.

People sit at tables doing research in the Ahmanson Reading Room

Using the Library

Every year, researchers from over 30 countries make more than 20,000 visits to the Library’s reading rooms, and thousands more make use of the Library’s virtual services and digital collections.

Library News

rare book opened to page of world map

About the Library

  • One of the world’s largest collections of British medieval manuscripts, including the 15th-century Ellesmere manuscript of Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales.
  • One of 12 surviving copies on vellum of the Gutenberg Bible, the jewel of the second-largest collection of incunabula (15th-century printed books) in the United States.
  • A leading repository for Americana, including extensive holdings for Lincoln, Washington, and Jefferson, and such gems as the original manuscript of Franklin’s autobiography.
  • Extensive collections on the American West, including the great 19th-century photographic surveys and original sources about overland migration, industry and transport, and Native Americans.