This San Diego Library Is Now Home to an Archive of Craft Brewing History

National Library Week is a good time to remember that libraries hold more than just books. The institutions can be home to telescopes, tie collections, and in the case of California State University, San Marcos (CSUSM), beer paraphernalia tracing the history of craft breweries in San Diego.

As Public Libraries Online reports, the Brewchive is a new project from the university's library. According to CSUSM Special Collections and History Librarian Judith Downie, the collection dates back to the late 1980s, about the time that the craft brewing scene first started to gain steam in the San Diego area. Around 30 years ago there were maybe five or six craft breweries in the county; today there are 156.

Downie wants to feature artifacts from as many local breweries that have opened in that time span as possible. She's currently on the hunt for items like growlers, coasters, t-shirts, and tap handles—some she has to purchase with her own money and others brewery owners are happy to donate.

The Brewchive also includes an online component, with newsletters from a local homebrewing association and brewing logs and scoresheets from homebrewing competitions. Eventually the web archive will have recorded oral histories of San Diego craftbrewing as told by homebrewers and professionals.

There's still no word on whether the university plans to sell actual craft beer to go along with the local history, but if they did, it wouldn't be a first for a library. The Jefferson County Public Library, in Denver, Colorado was the latest to use craft brew to entice a new generation of visitors.