New Year Brings New Titles & Resources to Presidio Research Center

By Dez Alaniz, Director of the Presidio Research Center  

SBTHP’s Presidio Research Center closed out 2025 with two major collections-focused projects underway. In addition to supporting the programs and research needs of staff and our wider community, we have been working behind the scenes to provide better access to more materials.  

The Presidio Research Center

New Online Catalog 

The first project, initiated in September, was to move our online collection of approximately 3500 unique books into a new catalog system hosted through Library Thing.* This change has allowed us to create an easier-to-use portal into our collections and has lowered costs and enabled a more streamlined interface for researchers like you.  

Moving an entire catalog of thousands of records is no small undertaking. Our workflow involves examining every hard copy book on our shelves for condition, annotations, and relevance to our collecting scope. The existing catalog record from our old system is checked with our item on hand, updated (if needed) and then uploaded to our new cataloging system. As of this post, we have moved about 1500 of our roughly 3500 titles into our new system, allowing us to identify duplicates and items in need of preservation or additional description work. 

New Titles 

We have also been busy adding new titles into our reference collection. You can view our list of new titles in it’s entirety at the link here. Items do not circulate, but you can book an appointment to visit us and review the following titles and more. Here are some highlights: 

Indigenous Histories and Knowledge 

• Orderly Anarchy: Sociopolitical Evolution in Aboriginal California (2015) 

• Chumash Healing: Changing Health and Medical Practices in an American Indian Society (1993) 

• On Indian Ground: A Return to Indigenous Knowledge-Generating Hope, Leadership and Sovereignty through Education (2017) 

• The Study of Indigenous Landscape and Seascape Stewardship on the Central California Coast (2025) 

• We Are the Land: A History of Native California (2021) 

• The Way We Lived: California Indian Stories, Songs and Reminiscences (2017 edition) 

California History (Spanish, Mexican and U.S. Periods) 

• Worlds of Junipero Serra: Historical Contexts and Cultural Representations (2018) 

• Other California: Land, Identity, and Politics on the Mexican Borderlands (2016) 

• Re-Dressing America's Frontier Past (2012) 

• On the Borders of Love and Power: Families and Kinship in the Intercultural American Southwest (2012) 

• Franciscan Missions and the Chumash Uprising: La Purisima Concepcion Mission in California (2025) 

• Missions of California: A Legacy of Genocide (1987) 

• Indigenizing California Mission Art and Architecture (2025) 

• Lands of Promise and Despair: Chronicles of Early California, 1535–1846 (2015) 

Chinese Communities in California, U.S. Period 

• The Chinese Laundryman: A Study of Social Isolation (1988) 

• American Heathens (2012) 

• The Indispensable Enemy: Labor and the Anti-Chinese Movement in California (1975) 

Channel Islands 

• An Archaeology of Abundance: Reevaluating the Marginality of California’s Islands (2019) 

• Third California Islands Symposium: Recent advances in Research on the California Islands (1993) 
  
  

Santa Barbara City History 

• Santa Barbara's Central City: Choices for the Future (1974): 

• "Clavelitos" Landmark Proposal (1995) 

• Juarez-Hosmer Adobe Landmark Proposal (1995) 

The Presidio Research Center is free to visit and open to the public by appointment only. Visit us online to learn more about our collections and/or to make an appointment. 

*Note: SBTHP’s portal to its archival collections has not changed.