Rare Book Monthly
Articles - December - 2002 Issue
Arizona and the Southwest at the University of Arizona Library Special Collections
feature article
This is one of our big collections of 19th century Arizona history. Apache agent at San Carlos Indian Reservation, he was first mayor of Tomstone, founder of the Tombstone Epitaph, just a huge figure for Southern Arizona. His biography, Apache Agent, actually done by his son, is another example of the life of someone who lived in the area at the time. So you have these kinds of general histories, then you have narratives and biographies of people who were there. Then you have the whole Indian genre, which is its own thing. So you have stuff like Apache by Will Levington Comfort, which is just a blockbuster when it comes to accounts of Indian life. And then you have stuff like Laughing Boy by Oliver La Farge, you know; books about Native Americans. You know again you there are so many subdivisions, and then you have the military stuff…
JC: Like expeditions, natural histories…?
SS: Natural history is a huge one; Joseph Wood Krutch is huge, like The Desert Year is a great book of natural history of the area. Of course he was a University of Arizona faculty member. I think that it’s difficult to pin down the most important books because it depends on what aspect of the history of the region you are talking about.
JC: Does Special Collections receive a more common research request for a particular manuscript or book? Are the requests so broad and varied that you really couldn’t say?
SS: In general, I would say the scope is so broad that it’s difficult to say this item from a collection is more heavily used. However, if I had to point one out I would say actually the Morris Udall Congressional Papers are probably the most often used collection. And I think part of that is they cover a broad range of time and he was involved in so many different issues in Arizona and the U.S. that people with a lot of diffuse interest can find content there that relates to their research. For example, someone doing research on the Central Arizona Project would just find a gold mine there. Someone looking into environmental themes like the Alaska Wilderness Bill, which Mo Udall was the main sponsor of, would both find content that would relate to their subject, even thought the subjects are completely different from each other.
Its very difficult to find super heavily used materials, you can find a broad range of materials that are used by a handful of people, which is probably good, because it signifies that we are relevant to a variety of researchers, but I guess I’d say that’s our strength, the scope of our collections appeals to a variety researchers and so we really don’t see the same thing over and over, it just changes on a daily basis on what the person’s needs are. Udall is used a lot, just because it covers so much ground. Whereas with John Clum’s Papers it’s really just about John Clum, so his papers don’t have as much appeal as Mo Udall. You don’t necessarily have to be interested in him to be interested in that collection.
