The collection consists of personal and professional incoming and outgoing correspondence, research, lectures, and unpublished papers, and Stone's obituary. Correspondents include many of the chief librarians from the nation's top universities at the time, and the Dean of the Library School at the University of Chicago, Louis R. Wilson.

John Paul Stone served as head librarian at San Diego State University from 1931-1960. He received his Ph.D. in Library Sciences at the University of Chicago in 1945, was a professor of library science at Louisiana State College, then created and taught in the Library Science program at San Diego State. He undertook an important nationwide survey of library revenue for the American Library Association in 1940, and also a survey of regional union catalogues and bibliographies that was published in 1945.

0.42 linear ft

The copyright interests in these materials have not been transferred to San Diego State University. Copyright resides with the creators of materials contained in the collection or their heirs. The nature of historical archival and manuscript collections is such that copyright status may be difficult or even impossible to determine.  Requests for permission to publish must be submitted to the Head of Special Collections, San Diego State University, Library and Information Access. When granted, permission is given on behalf of Special Collections as the owner of the physical item and is not intended to include or imply permission of the copyright holder(s), which must also be obtained in order to publish. Materials from our collections are made available for use in research, teaching, and private study. The user must assume full responsibility for any use of the materials, including but not limited to, infringement of copyright and publication rights of reproduced materials.

The collection is open for research.