South Bay Cities Genealogical Society

Promoting Genealogical Education and Research in Southern California's South Bay

Welcome to the SBCGS Library

The SBCGS Library room started off as a room with just a table and chairs and volunteers to run and collect books from storage for the genealogists and visitors who came in.

When Torrance remodeled the basement of the Katy Geissert main branch in 2001, the society was generously given a room devoted entirely to our collection of about 1,200 titles and 300 periodicals. Recent expansion of our shelving now affords us with room to grow, and we have slowly started to overflow into the public area of the Torrance Public Library!

We have an extensive mid-colonies and New England collection, with other areas growing all the time. Besides books, the library room has a small map collection, a microfiche collection, and a vertical file. The latter is actually a three drawer cabinet that contains file folders which hold items categorized by region and state. These items include things of interest historically, but are not necessarily of genealogical value. Some treasures can be found in there.

The (physical) card catalog has sort headings of: new books, periodicals, by author, by title, by subject and by call number.

For a searchable list of our current holdings, click here or on the Catalog link on the side of this page.

Volunteer Staffing

The room is staffed by volunteers on:

• Tuesday and Thursday 10am – 2pm,
• before the general meeting 5:30pm – 7pm (third Wednesday of the month unless otherwise stated), and
• the Saturday following the general meeting from 10am – 12pm.

The room is available when the library is open and genealogical research takes precedence.

We hope that you will stop by and take advantage of our collection. You never know what you might find.