Instructional Services Librarian
SF City Assessor's Office
The San Francisco City Assessor's Office features a property search that will display the construction and permitting history of any SF property and provide links to related Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps.
- SF Planning Map LibraryProperty, zoning, and demographic maps published by the San Francisco Planning Department.
Special Interest Websites
There are many websites dedicated to local history owned and operated by volunteers and enthusiasts. Here are a few of our favorites.
- Western Neighborhoods ProjectSpecial focus is given to San Francisco's "Outside Lands" - the Richmond, Sunset, and Ingleside districts.
- FoundSFArticles and photos contributed by local historians.
- Urban Life Signs Topo MapsUrban planner Brian Stokle designed stunning topographic maps of San Francisco.
- Up from the DeepLocal historian and photographer Mark Ellinger's exploration of the Tenderloin district.
- Sunnyside HistoryFocused on the history of the area between CCSF and Glen Park.
SF News Blogs
There are many local neighborhood news blogs in San Francisco and Oakland. Here are a few of the most prominent.
- HoodlineNeighborhood news covering SF and Oakland.
- SFistThe local edition of the national Gothamist blog network.
- SocketSiteReal estate and development blog covering San Francisco and Oakland.
- StreetsblogLocal edition of a national blog network covering urbanism, transit, and cycling issues.
The Bay Area's Lost Streetcars
Local transit enthusiast Chris Arvin built this interactive map showing where San Francisco and Oakland used to have streetcars compared to today.
Local Research Guide
Welcome to the CCA Libraries guide to researching San Francisco, Oakland, and the Bay Area. You will find information on books and journals in our library as well as links to resources for studying local history, architecture, and urban spaces.
8th, Hooper and Irwin Streets in 1938 and 2015, courtesy SF Planning's San Francisco 1938 and 2015.
Historic Photos
Historic Images
San Francisco Historical Photograph Collection
The San Francisco Public Library has the largest collection of historic San Francisco photographs, 40,000 of which have been digitized and made accessible on the library's website. In addition, the independent website OldSF developed a tool for searching the SFPL's historic image collection across a map of modern San Francisco.
OpenSFHistory
The Western Neighborhoods Project recently launched OpenSFHistory, digitized images owned by an anonymous private collector. The images can be browsed by thematic collections, by neighborhoods, or by using a map overlay.
Oakland History Room's Digitized Image Collection
The Online Archive of California hosts the Oakland Public Library's collection of history Oakland photographs. More historic photographs are available in person in the OPL's Oakland History Room.
Digital Archives
California Digital Newspaper Collection (CDNC)
The CDNC contains scanned and searchable historic newspapers from around the state of California, including the San Francisco Call (1890-1913), the Pacific Appeal (1862-1880), and the Daily Alta California (1849-1891). Search across the archive, by newspaper, or by time period.
Digitized Book Collections
Search the full-text of the millions of books, magazines, and historic documents included in HathiTrust or in the Google Books project. Books in the public domain can be read online or downloaded. Books under copyright restrictions will be limited to snippet views.
Online Archive of California & Calisphere
The OAC and Calisphere are both projects of the UC's California Digital Library, or CDL. The OAC collects the records, digital images, and documents of over 200 contributing museums, libraries, and archives, including all ten campuses of the University of California. Calisphere focuses on those institution's digital collections, including images, texts, and recordings.
David Rumsey Map Collection
The David Rumsey Map Collection is a publicly accessible digital archive of one of the world's largest private map collections, with over 65,000 maps and images online. Many of the historic maps can be displayed side-by-side with modern digital maps through the Georeferencer tool (example).
Internet Archive
San Francisco's Internet Archive is a digital library containing books, magazines, archived websites, videos, games and more. The Internet Archive has many special collections related to San Francisco and Bay Area history.
- Neighborhood Newspapers of San FranciscoThe Internet Archive has digitized many historic neighborhood newspapers of San Francisco.
- Prelinger ArchiveRick Prelinger's amazing collection of industrial and ephemeral found footage digitized and made available through the Internet Archive.
Statistical Data Sources
SF Open Data
Statistical information and data published by the City and County of San Francisco can be browsed and searched using this platform.
