Library information
Our library is currently in the process of being moved to the San Mateo Public Library. Please contact the library manager for more information.
Sara Hayden, Library Manager
The SMCGS library collection is located at the Cañada College Library at Building 9, Third Floor, 4200 Farm Hill Blvd., Redwood City, CA 94061. It is located at the rear of the Library. 
PARKING: Parking permits are not currently required.
- The genealogy help desk is currently not staffed during our transition. Check the Cañada College Library calendar for normal holiday closures and the San Mateo County Community College District library information page for information about coronavirus pandemic closures.
- If you wish assistance with the genealogical collection, please send an email message to the Library Manager.
- The Cañada College Library Staff is not available to provide genealogical research assistance..
SMCGS LIBRARY COLLECTION DOES NOT CIRCULATE: SMCGS library books must be used in the library.
Location of the SMCGS library collectionThe
SMCGS library collection is located at the Cañada College Library at
Building 9, Third Floor, 4200 Farm Hill Blvd., Redwood City, CA 94061.
It is located at the rear of the Library. |
Cañada College campus map
The Library is located in Building 9.
Path from parking lot to LibraryThe Library is located in Building 9. The closest access is from Parking Lot 1.
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Public transportationCañada College is served by two SamTrans routes - Bus 274 and Bus 278. Both routes connect to the Caltrain Station. For detailed route information, please visit the #274 Route Map and #278 Route Map. Call 1-800-660-4BUS for schedules and routes as not all buses run every day or check online for current route and schedule information. Some of our contentFINDING AIDS
CATALOGS
COLLECTIONS Other Collections
DONATIONS
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The Shellens Collection
Compiled by Richard Schellens
Richard Schellens, one of the founding members of the Redwood City Archives Committee, was an accountant by trade and a historian by obsession. His love of the history of San Mateo County and San Francisco has left us with a collection of abstracts that have been organized into binders by the Redwood City Archives Committee. Schellens gathered not only current day information, but he systematically went back through old directories, county histories, great registers, county record books and newspapers, extracting, abstracting, photocopying, and indexing the lives of the residents of San Mateo County, San Francisco, and beyond.
The originals of these volumes, which cover the whole county rather than just Redwood City, are housed in the Redwood City Main Library History Room. SMCGS has copies of the entire collection housed with our library collection in the Cañada College Library. The San Mateo County collection can be found at 979.461 SCH, and the San Francisco Collection can be found at 979.461.
Three volumes of Redwood City real estate transactions include hand-drawn maps and references to the deeds in the San Mateo County Official Record books. More than fifty books hold records of Redwood City residents sorted by the main surname of the record. Other volumes are sorted by township, with both current and no longer existent townships being covered.
While the Schellens Collection would seldom be considered a primary source, being comprised of second-hand materials, it is a wonderful finding aid for records of tens of thousands of San Mateo County and San Francisco residents, as well as residents of other California counties and the western states. The main limitation of this work was the lack of an index. With the help of many dedicated SMCGS members as well as members of other societies around the state, the entire 191-volume collection has been indexed. You can find links to the indexes in the Databases section of this website.
Volumes covering the other counties of California can be found in a binder at the beginning of each county’s book collection; general volumes contained in the California Binders are also included in this index. See Databases for links to the indexes.
It is important to note in which index you find a name if you are ordering copies or trying to find the item in the library.
San Mateo County Genealogical Society SMCGS is a 501(c)(3) organization | PO Box 5569 |
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