Our Collections

All branches have car repair manuals in their circulating collections and have access to the online databases AllData and Auto Repair Source.

(see Special Collections)

An outstanding collection of print and audio-visual materials for adults and young people on the history and culture of African Americans that is located at the Scotlandville Branch Library. All items are searchable through the Library Catalog.

The Library’s collection of Braille books for children is located in the Children’s Room at the Main Library.

In our Business collection you will find investment tools, corporate directories, company histories, business journals, legal information and online databases. We also have books to help you with business start-up, management and growth. Many of our business materials are located at the Main Library, although some items can be found at other branches and our online databases are accessible from any of our branches and from outside the Library with a valid East Baton Rouge Parish Library card.

For more information about this collection please see our Business in the Library InfoGuide.

(see Special Collections)

The Foundation Center Cooperating Grants Collection, located at the River Center Branch Library,  contains a large selection of print and digital materials to assist you in identifying and contacting grant-making organizations. The digital part of the collection includes online tools such as Foundation Directory Online Professional, Foundation Grants to Individuals Online, Philanthropy In/Sight® and FoundationSearch.

While most materials in this collection are non-circulating, a small collection of materials on fundraising, grant writing and nonprofit management titles are available for check-out.

For more information about this collection please see our Grants InfoGuide.

The Library of Things is a collection of items all available to check out for free with a library card. Try out that new game before you buy it, scope out Saturn from the comfort of your backyard, learn to program a microcomputer, and so much more with the East Baton Rouge Parish Library’s Library of Things! 

Our current Library of Things includes:

• Arduino Kits
• Board Games
• Telescope
• Wi-fi Hotspots
• Family Activity Kits
• Playaways
• Art Prints
• Blood Pressure Kits
• State Park Passes 
• Westwood WU-S Soprano Ukuleles
• Litter collection kits
• Seed library
• Floor piano keyboards
• Microscopes

For more information, explore the tabs of this InfoGuide or call us at 225-231-3750.

A large collection of materials on all aspects of the history, geography and culture of the State of Louisiana that is located at the Main Library and all branch libraries.

The Main Library is designated a Selective “Core” Collection Depository for State documents, receiving basic publications deemed of interest to the general public. Unless superseded, the Library must retain these items for a minimum of six or two years (depending on the type of document). Many documents are on the Web for easy access. Most “Core” titles can also be found in the Library Catalog.  Most of these do not leave the library building.

The Main Library also maintains current issues of Municipal Documents and back issues as space will allow.

We no longer receive the majority of holdings from the Louisiana Public Document Depository Program. We continue to receive random publications directly from the issuing agency.

Click here for a list of government documents that the Library has catalogued.

All of these items are located at the Main Library; please ask in the Reference Department for assistance with these documents.

For a complete list of Core State documents, click here.  (This list does not include the Municipal and Federal documents the Library owns.)

This collection, located at the Main Library in the Special Collections area, contains microfilm editions of The Advocate (known as the Morning Advocate until January 13, 1992), The State-Times, the Times-Picayune, and, through 2007, The New York Times. It also includes archived editions of other local newspapers as well as magazines and both professional and popular journals. Although this collection does not circulate, it is easily accessed and copies can be made of any article using our microfilm readers/printers.

Additionally, archived editions of The Advocate, The State-Times, and the Times-Picayune can be found among the Historical Newspapers in Newsbank (one of our online databases).

The Library also offers online access to The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Wall Street Journal.

Housed at the Carver Branch Library, it is filled with perspectives from residents of South Baton Rouge in historical periods such as the Civil Rights Movement.

According to the T. Harry Williams Center for Oral History website, they are copies of the McKinley High School Oral History Project, which both began and concluded in the 1990s. Click here for more information about this project.

The East Baton Rouge Parish Library Outreach Collections are not housed in a particular library building; they can be found instead at the following locations:

• The Seniors Bookmobile
  • Houses 6,000 items, largely consisting of audiovisual and large print titles.
• The Preschool Literacy Outreach Bookmobile
  • Houses thousands of items, mostly aimed at a preschool audience.
• The Head Start and Early Head Start Deposit Collections
  • Consists of over 1,500 picture books scattered around all Baton Rouge Head Start and Early Head Start centers.
• The Juvenile Detention Center
  • Houses hundreds of books, periodicals and audiovisual materials for at-risk teens and pre-teens.
• Other Deposit Collections
  • “Small collections of light reading, large print, and children’s materials have been placed at a number of local community residences and day care facilities.” (from the Outreach page on the Library’s web site)

For more information about these collections please visit the Outreach Services section of our web site.

The mission of the Pride Branch Library Community History Collection is to collect, manage, preserve, and provide access to items that represent significant historical actions of local governments, businesses, residents and institutions of the communities of Pride and Chaneyville and the immediate surrounding area.  These items include but are not limited to photographs, manuscripts, documents, periodical publications, audiotapes and memorabilia.

For more information about this collection please visit our Pride Branch Library Community History Collection InfoGuide.

Special Collections consists of the Genealogy Collection and the Baton Rouge Room.  Both departments are adjacent to one another and are now located on the second floor of the Main Library on Goodwood Blvd.

The Baton Rouge Room   

The Baton Rouge Room contains historical materials on Baton Rouge history. This collection includes documents, photographs, manuscripts and books, some of which are accessible through our Baton Rouge Digital Archive. For more information about this collection please see our Baton Rouge Room InfoGuide. (Also see the Vertical Files section below.)

Genealogy

An extensive collection of books, periodicals, and microfilm on local, state, and regional family history. It includes books for all of the continental United States with a focus on the South including Virginia, the Carolinas, Georgia, Mississippi, Alabama, and Texas.

The Louisiana related books—the focus of our Genealogy Collection—are a special subset of the collection and are set apart. This part of the Genealogy Collection includes all of the currently published south and southwestern Louisiana records books (commonly called “Father Hebert’s books”), the Sacramental Records of the Roman Catholic Church of the Archdiocese of New Orleans, and the Diocese of Baton Rouge, Catholic Church Records books.

This department also has the Annie Laurie Moody Collection—a large genealogical collection owned and maintained by the local chapters of the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR); they are in the process of being put into an index separate from the Library Catalog.

In addition, our Genealogy Collection has many books that assist people of color, and how-to books for many nationalities.  

For more information about this collection please see our Genealogy InfoGuide.

These books, donated by The Advocate and housed at the River Center Branch Library, comprise the core of our cooking collection.

The Main Library has extensive files of newspaper clippings from The Advocate and the Times-Picayune newspapers going back to the 1930’s. These files contain information on Louisiana (from parish information to LSU to politicians) and on Baton Rouge people, places and events. There are newspaper stories in the files on just about anything to do with our city and state. Other library locations in the East Baton Rouge Parish Library system also maintain vertical files, many of them focusing on neighborhood information and homework support. Call your local branch to find out what information their files contain.

The Main Library’s Vertical Files are now part of the Baton Rouge Room. Click here for more information.