Collections and Archives

 

Acquisition
Collection Highlights
University Archives and Faculty Papers
Access to Collections
 

The University Library's Special Collections offers UCSC's academic community, visiting scholars, and the general public access to the library's most unique holdings. Established in the late 1960s, the department supports the University's academic program and its instructional and research interests. It also preserves and promotes collections that hold particular historical and cultural significance to an international scholarly community, houses and provides access to publications and archives focusing on the geographic region of Santa Cruz, and serves as the repository for UCSC administrative archives.
 
Holdings range from manuscripts and rare books to local ephemera, works of art and audio and visual material. The collections afford opportunities for interdisciplinary research, particularly in fields such as the history of printing and book arts; modernism in art, literature, and photography; women’s and community studies; and local history.
 

  

Acquisition

Special Collections acquires material by purchase, transfer, and gift. Decisions on what is collected are made by the Special Collections Librarian based on criteria such as the following:

  • Relationship to the Campus’s Academic Plans
  • Relevance and Consistency with the Goals and Activities of the University Library
  • The Importance of Material for Scholarly Research
  • Maintaining the Integrity of Extant Collections
  • Commitment to Providing Regional Resources
  • Ability to Catalog, Conserve, House, and Promote Material in a Proper Manner

The many exceptional collections and archives in Special Collections are often testimonies to the generosity of its friends and donors.
 

Collection Highlights

Many of our collections focus on book arts and fine printing, including examples that show remarkable creativity and ingenuity in exploring inter-relationships among text, image, and object. Holdings in book arts range from a distinguished representative collection of 16th Century Italian printing to the archive of the Trianon Press, a French publisher of art and fine press books, most notably of exquisite facsimiles of the English artist, poet and mystic William Blake. Special Collections also houses the archive of the poet, novelist, and pacifist Kenneth Patchen, with over 100 examples of his painted picture poems, and also contains representative holdings from well known Northern California presses such as the Grabhorn and Arion presses, the Greenwood Press, and the Foolscap Press of Santa Cruz. It proudly displays the work of eminent printer William Everson and the productions of the Library’s own Lime Kiln Press (1967-1982). Additionally, Special Collections hosts a rich assortment of artist books from printers, bookmakers, and artists such as Felicia Rice, Gaza Bowen, and Julie Chen.