Library Tours: South Chula Vista Library
The 4th stop in our tour brings us to the mecca of old shoujo series!
Today we’re going to take a look at a library that I used to visit back when I was in high school! This is the South Chula Vista Branch Library which was originally built in 1995 by Mexican architect Ricardo Legorretta. This large library’s exterior has a mix of modern and 1950s traditional architecture and is beautifully landscape with cacti, succulents, and palm trees. This library is quite large and houses over 155,000 books, it also often hosts events, tutoring services, and art exhibits. Back in high school, I even got to exhibit two of my art pieces during a local art show. Let me show you around a library that’s special to me!
This library is probably the one I’ve frequented the most myself back when I was a student. If you’re someone who enjoys getting lost in a library, then I feel like you’ll really enjoy this one due to the way it’s laid out. You can really lose track of time just wandering around this place.
Despite how large this library is, everything is well organized. For parents, there is a large children’s library with books in English and also Spanish. For the adults, there is also an incredible selection of books in English and a very large selection of fiction and non-fiction books in Spanish. There also had a lot of physical language books for Spanish speakers wanting to learn English, including a lot of “Inglés Sin Barreras” which I feel like every hispanic kid will remember from the commercials that used to air back in the day.
When it comes to the manga section, that is located in the Arturo Barrios Young Adult room that is housed in a room with a beautiful open ceiling. The bookshelves are packed with a lot of nostalgic manga series! If you’re a fan of older and out of print manga, then this is probably the location to hit up if you’re a San Diego county local. Especially for my shoujo girlies, this manga section had an incredible selection of older shoujo titles.
I literally found so many of the shoujo series that I’ve been wanting to read but are so hard to find for a decent price. I am so glad that they have the entirely of Sand Chronicles, Boys over Flowers, and also Pet Shop of Horrors which just got a reprint but I think I might just save my money and read it from the library before I even consider investing in the collector’s edition.
I know I mainly took pictures of the shoujo and other manga series written by women, but it truly made me happy seeing so many series that young girls can discover. I feel like I’ve gotten used to getting crumbs when it comes to shoujo representation, but I feel like I could see how much care the librarians have put into curating this manga section.
It might not be the most up to date selection of manga, but it is definitely the best curated selection of older series that unfortunately are very hard to find nowadays.
South Chula Vista Branch Library
389 Orange Avenue
Chula Vista, CA 91911
You can follow my library tour on YouTube and TikTok!