The SSU library hosted their first digital exhibit entitled “Mapping Our Community: Gaye LeBaron and the Stories of Sonoma County” which features archived works from their Gaye LeBaron Collection. Gaye LeBaron is a well-known columnist at the Press Democrat and is known for her columns and books on the history of Santa Rosa.

The library regularly holds exhibits for students to visit on campus on the second floor, but this exhibition is available online. The exhibit contains over 750 pieces ranging from research notes to unpublished works and more.

This exhibit also provides virtual visitors with background information on Gaye LeBaron as a writer and the history on the wide range of topics she covered throughout her career. LeBaron devoted over 60 years of her life to researching and writing about events and residents that helped shape Sonoma County.

The exhibit is composed of five different sections which focus on different topics within Sonoma County’s history. For example, “Utopian Communities in Sonoma County” and “The Bracero Program in Sonoma County” were two focuses of the exhibit.

According to Catherine Fonseca, the library’s Outreach and Inclusion Librarian, “Not only does Ms. LeBaron weave her subject’s voices into her articles, she lends them agency in the way she relays their stories and preserves their contributions to the story-making process.”

“The documented community response to Gaye LeBaron’s journalism is what makes this collection so unique and our planning committee was able to tap into those authentic connections and conversations when building the digital exhibit,” she continued.

This collection has been continuously growing over the last 20 years, since LeBaron entrusted the library with some of her work in 2001. 

Lynn Prime, the head of the Specials Collection and University Archive at Schulz library stated, “The collection is the most-used Special Collection we have, and hundreds of first and second year students as well as History and GEP students, and graduate students in many different disciplines, have made use of its valuable primary source material since 2002.”

Similar to the library’s in-person exhibits, the online exhibit will have an end date. 

“The exhibit in its present form will be accessible through the end of the academic year,” said Fonseca. 

“Ultimately we intend to expand on this virtual offering and host a more robust encounter with the Gaye LeBaron collection through an in-person exhibit in the University Library’s gallery space,” she continued. 

While the exhibit will no longer exist online after the end of the academic year, students will still be able to request access to see the Gaye LeBaron collection through the Sonoma State website. Students simply submit their request and wait between 3-5 days for a response. 

“For me, the most gratifying part of curating this exhibit was the personal and contemporary connections I drew from the collection materials. LeBaron’s writing has an evergreen quality where the issues and subjects she spotlights carry such relevance to present-day experiences,” Fonseca shared.

For more information or to view the collection, visit sonomastate.co/Gaye-LeBaron.