The Local History Collection at the Oxnard Public Library includes books that are valuable to the recorded history of the City of Oxnard and the County of Ventura.

The Special Collection Room houses a variety of school yearbooks, but mostly from Oxnard High School.  For many years the books were acquired through donations but have become so popular the library has begun buying the Oxnard High School books each year. Since for many years they were acquired through donations, there are some gaps in the collection and we are still interested in receiving donations in the hopes of filling in the gaps. The collection includes the range from the very first yearbook in 1906 to the present.

There are a number of personal memoirs of individuals who have made their home in Ventura County and one very fine scrapbook of notes and photographs of a French-Immigrant family.

The library contains several biographical dictionaries of "prominent" citizens who settled in the area at the turn of the 20th century, as well as individual biographies of people such as banker, Achille Levy, Senator Thomas Bard, and one history of the first farmers who planted crops in the area.

It was the construction of the American Beet Sugar Company refinery, in 1898, that spurred the development of the town called Oxnard.  The library has a fine collection of books that discuss the raising and processing of sugar beets.

We have a group of street and telephone directories beginning with 1908.  As with our high school yearbooks, there are some gaps in the collection but these can be very useful in genealogical research or in identifying the location of a particular business that is no longer open.