The Taube-Baron Collection of Jewish History and Culture is the cornerstone of the Stanford University Libraries’ Jewish Studies holdings. Comprising 20,000 volumes from the personal library of Professor Salo Wittmayer Baron (1895-1989) of Columbia University, the collection was purchased in December 1985. In 1990, shortly after Prof. Baron’s death, the Salo W. and Jeannette M. Baron Foundation donated his extensive personal papers to Stanford (manuscript collection call number, M0580). Salo Baron was the author, among other things, of the 18-volume Social and Religious History of the Jews. He held the first Jewish History chair established in a major American university (1930-1963). His library includes Hebrew editions of the Bible dating from the 15th century, rare volumes of Jewish literature and history from Eastern Europe and around the world, works on Jewish Americana, Jewish anthropology and sociology, and thousands of pamphlets and journals. It also includes Baron's own publications. Approximately 1,000 printed volumes and manuscripts in the Taube-Baron Collection are housed in Special Collections together with other rare books; the rest of the books belong to the circulating collections of the Stanford Libraries.

The Taube-Baron Collection was acquired with the generous support of the Jewish Community Endowment Fund of the Jewish Community Federation of San Francisco, the Peninsula, and Marin and Sonoma Counties, and the family of Tad Taube.