Rare Book Monthly
Articles - December - 2002 Issue
Arizona and the Southwest at the University of Arizona Library Special Collections
Cabeza de Vaca's La Relacion y Comentarios del Gouerna, 1555. Coutesy of University of Arizona Library Special Collections.
SS: It’s something that is definitely evolving and developing over time in a few different ways. As far as the book collection goes, we have standing orders with vendors with supplies of newly published stuff, and then one of our librarians works with dealers catalogues on a daily basis trying to find the out of print and rare older stuff as well. On the manuscript side, it really works in two ways. One is we’ll identify people who we think we’d like to have their papers or their collections and then we will approach them. For example, Tom Miller has done a lot of writing on the Southwest and Central America. We approached him and purchased his papers last year. Here is someone who is a local Tucson author who writes primarily on the Southwest, someone whose papers we should have.
On the other hand, sometimes things are donated to us. For example, one of the Udall families asked us if we would like to have their papers and so we do collect everything Udall here, so that is something that we accepted, we didn’t necessarily go out and look for, but when the opportunity was presented to us, we were happy to accept it. So the manuscript part comes through going out and pursuing materials as well as reacting to offers that are made. But in both cases, whether it’s the book collection or the manuscript collection, we’re driven by our focus on primarily Arizona and the Southwest, and of course the University as well in that if we have a Nobel winning professor or high profile well known faculty person who’s not necessarily doing research on the Southwest we might be inclined to accept their papers as well.
We do have a collection development policy as far as our primary areas of collecting. Then again Southwest and Arizona is the big one that really does drive most of what we do. For instance, some of the other ones are American and British literature. For example, we have the papers of Charles Bukowski, American writer, really had nothing to do with Arizona and the Southwest. Another one is history of science, and especially astronomy. The other major one would be book arts, the book as a book form, so we collect examples and literature about that area as well.
So, what we solicit and what we accept is all informed by this handful of major collecting areas. If we are offered something that doesn’t fit that, then we make a recommendation on another institution that would be more appropriate.
JC: What is the background and the history of the University of Arizona Library Special Collections?
