The mission of the San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance Library is to support and collaborate with staff in collecting, organizing, preserving, and providing access to the global resources necessary to enhance and promote our world-class zoological and botanical gardens and our wildlife conservation efforts. The Library serves as a gateway to information, promoting ongoing learning and scientific discovery for San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance curators, veterinarians, researchers, educators, and horticulturists.
Located on the second floor of the Beckman Center for Conservation Research, the main library occupies 2,000 square feet overlooking the San Pasqual Valley Agricultural Preserve. Over the years, the Library has assembled a broad collection of specialized resources concerning animal behavior and husbandry, veterinary medicine, vertebrate zoology, taxonomy, wildlife conservation, ecology, horticulture, natural history, and zoos. The Library’s collection includes approximately 11,500 books and videos, 200 active serial subscriptions, and thousands of online publications. The Library has one of the few extensive collections of IUCN and Conservation Breeding Specialist Group documents in the world and one of the most complete collections of international studbooks. Completing the collection is an archive and rare book room.
The Library is not open to the general public, but through a variety of cooperative agreements with other libraries, many collection resources are made available to other institutions and individuals through inter-library loan. Our Library portal to zoo and conservation information is available to all wildlife enthusiasts and provides virtual access to our unique collection.
