The Louisiana Division is a reference division which collects resources relating to the study of Louisiana and its citizens and to the city of New Orleans and New Orleanians. Other areas of concentration are the Mississippi River, the Gulf of Mexico, and the South. Included within the Division's collections are books by or about Louisianians; city, regional, and state documents; manuscripts, maps, newspapers, periodicals, microfilms, photographs, slides, motion pictures, sound recordings, video tapes, postcards, and ephemera of every sort.

The Louisiana Division also houses the City Archives, the official repository for the records of New Orleans municipal government (1769-present), and holds on deposit the pre-1927 records of the civil courts and the pre-1932 records of the criminal courts of Orleans Parish.

Special Collections maintained by the Division are the Rare Vertical File, the Carnival Collection, the Louisiana Photograph Collection, the Map Collection, the Menu Collection, the Postcard Collection, the Manuscript Collection, and the Rare Book Collection.

The Division's extensive Genealogy Collection contains books, periodicals and microfilms with emphasis on New Orleans, Louisiana, the Southeast United States, Nova Scotia, France, and Spain. The fourth edition of the guide to our genealogical materials has sold out! We hope to reprint soon. Meanwhile, you can still LINK HERE to view the guide online.

To insure timely access to non-microfilmed original materials, researchers should contact the archivist before visiting the Library:

Irene Wainwright, Archivist
iwainwri@gno.lib.la.us
504 596-2610

Updated 11/11/2009