Welcome to the 2022-23 academic year! We missed you and invite you to visit Special Collections.

Through all the ups and downs of the past few years, we continued providing service whether you were near or far.

At the height of the pandemic, we offered services with a digital first approach followed by offering appointments. We eased into virtual events starting with Equality of Rights: An Ongoing Agenda Virtual Panel Discussion, Feminist Leadership Through Women’s Studies: A Panel Discussion with important speakers in conjunction with the Founding Mothers online exhibition.

We followed those events with the Films of Andrew Ellicott Douglass Astronomer, Archaeologist, and Father of Tree-Ring Dating, a culminating event to an important grant to preserve the films of A.E. Douglass. We also continued with our very successful Early Book Lecture Series XVII.  

During this time, we supported the research of our scholars and community-at-large. Our dedicated staff duplicated nearly 30,000 pages for local and remote researchers; answered nearly 2,000 queries; partnered with faculty to teach over 700 students; served researchers on-site with over 340 appointments since June 2021; and added more than 2,300 images to our digital collections.

As we all confronted the events of the past few years, we renewed and strengthened our commitment to making accessible and adding collections representative of marginalized communities through our participation in important projects such as the Digital Borderlands, a grant project funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

In collaboration with the University of Arizona's Confluencenter for Creative Inquiry, we are contributing to the Reclaiming the Border Narrative: Storytelling and Cultural Power for Migrant Justice project funded by the Ford Foundation.

We also strengthened our collection areas by adding the Arizona Queer Archives to our focus areas.  

We look forward to more in the coming years, and welcome you all to come visit! 

More information

Students, faculty, staff, and the public are welcome to visit Special Collections, located on the southwest corner of University Boulevard and Cherry Avenue. We're next door to the Main Library Starbucks and a department of the University Libraries.

Our services include research assistance, class instruction, duplications.

See our hours information to plan your visit.