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Overview

The Dorothy Peyton Gray Transportation Library and Archive is one of the most comprehensive transit operator-owned library resources in the United States. It first opened under the Los Angeles Railway in 1890 and was reintroduced to the public by the Southern California Rapid Transit District in 1971. It serves employees, the public, governments and research institutions and it is the only multimodal transportation library in Southern California. The library is a member of OCLC, the largest international library service network.

The library's catalog can be searched on-line. It can also be accessed along with 38 other transportation libraries through a union catalog, TLCat.

We are a partner of the National Transportation Library. We are working together to improve the availability of transportation-related information needed by Federal, state and local decision-makers with timely access to information supporting transportation policy, research, operations, and technology transfer.

The library and archive maintains additional web services, including the Los Angeles Transportation Headlines blog: http://losangelestransportation.blogspot.com as well as pages on Facebook, Myspace, Twitter, YouTube, Google Custom Search, and the Online Archive of California. Click here if you would like to be added to the daily Transportation Headlines email distribution list.

The Library’s Archive is a repository of local transportation history. The collection contains over 20,000 photographs, films, audio tapes, hundreds of video tapes, and various ephemera, books, journals, and artifacts documenting the role of public transportation back to 1873, including all of the predecessor public transportation providers/agencies that operated in the Greater Los Angeles area. It continuously seeks donations of significant historic items to preserve and enhance the understanding of the role public transportation has played in defining Los Angeles over the past 135 years. It is staffed by a published transportation historian and archivist. Some of its treasures are on display in the Research Center on the 15^th floor of the Union Station Gateway headquarters building and others are being digitized for access via the web.

Library staff have MLIS degrees and are members of the American Library Association and the Special Library Association’s Transportation Division. Staff also serve as members of the Transportation Research Board’s Information Services and Library & Information Science in Transportation Committees. We are also an active participant in the USC/Getty LA as Subject archives forum for the less visible cultural archives of Los Angeles

Recent Library & Archive publications:

Los Angeles Railway Yellow Cars by Jim Walker (2007)

Pacific Electric Red Cars by Jim Walker (2007)

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