Meeting Speaker for May 7, 2012 - Gary Kurutz - CA State Library

Since 1980, Gary Kurutz (pronounced Kertz) has served as Director of the Special Collections Branch of the California State Library in Sacramento. Special Collections includes the California History Section, Sutro Library, General Rare Book Collection, and Preservation Office. He now serves in an emeritus capacity. Previously, he held positions as Head Librarian, Sutro Library; Library Director, California Historical Society, and Bibliographer of Western American at the Henry E. Huntington Library. Additionally, he serves as Executive Director of the California State Library Foundation and is an instructor at the California Rare Book School at UCLA. He has received awards from The Book Club of California, the Huntington Library, California Historical Society, California Committee for the Promotion of History, Commonwealth Club of California, Oregon-California Trails Association, Sacramento Book Collectors Club, and the Sacramento County Historical Society.

Kurutz has written extensively on the California Gold Rush including the award winning The California Gold Rush: A Descriptive Bibliography of Books and Pamphlets Covering the Years 1848-1853 (San Francisco: The Book Club of California, 1997); "You Have Mail: Reading & Writing during the Golden Era," The Book Club of California Quarterly News-Letter (Summer 1999); and “Rooted in Barbarous Soil: Popular Culture on the Golden Shore,” in a Sesquicentennial Issue of California History (Summer 2000). "Seeing the Elephant for a Second Time: Reexamining the Bibliography of the California Gold Rush," California History Action, (Winter 1997), and "Images of El Dorado: The California Pictorial Letter Sheet," introduction for The Henry H. Clifford Collection, California Pictorial Letter Sheets. Austin, Texas: Dorothy Sloan - Rare Books, 1994.

Other titles include Knights of the Lash: The Stagecoach Stories of Major Benjamin C. Truman (The Book Club of California, m 2006); The Architectural Terra Cotta of Gladding, McBean (The Windgate Press, 1983); California Pastorale: Selected Photographs, 1870-1925 (The Windgate Press, 1998). He co-authored with his wife the award wining California Calls You: The Art of Promoting the Golden State 1870 to 1940 (Sausalito: The Windgate Press, 2000). In 2008, the University of Missouri Press published his book on the Mexican War entitled Recollections of the Mexican War by John C. Henshaw. He has written over one hundred articles for scholarly and library related publications. He is also editor of the California State Library Foundation Bulletin. For the last thirty-five years, Kurutz has given at least one talk per month.
A native of La Canada, California, Kurutz received an M.A. in history from the University of San Diego and a master’s degree in Library Science from the University of Southern California.