The Department of Special Collections and University Archives houses almost 30,000 books reflecting an evolving history of nearly a century and a half of collecting at UMass Amherst. Beginning with an early focus on agriculture and the natural sciences, the Library has developed into a resource for the study of regional and local history in New England, emphasizing our varied cultural, social, religious, and political histories.

The changing interests of researchers at UMass have led SCUA to build collections that extend well beyond New England. During the 1870s and 1880s, for example, the geologist Benjamin Smith Lyman built a library of over 300 scarce works printed in Japan between the 17th and late 19th centuries, touching on topics from the natural sciences and agriculture to Japanese medicine, religion, art, technology, and popular culture. Other noteworthy collections include two pertaining to the culture of the Cold War era: a growing collection of books printed in East Germany and one of the largest collections of materials in the United States from the Solidarity movement in Poland.

All printed materials held by SCUA are catalogued into the Library's on-line catalog. SCUA's online manuscript catalog, UMarmot, includes entries describing most major book collections.

The library holds key works in apiculture, entomology, gardening, landscape design, pomology, and viticulture, with numerous works in animal husbandry. Materials date back to the 16th century, however the strength of the collections lies in the late 18th and 19th centuries.

The McIntosh Cookery Collection Beatrice A. McIntosh Cookery Collection includes books, pamphlets, and ephemera relating to the culinary history of New England, including over 1,000 cookbooks published by church and community organizations.

Books by and about Robert Francis, Archibald MacLeish, William Manchester, William Lederer, and the Broadside Press, among others, as well as the poetry libraries of Francis, Wallace Stevens, and Anne Halley. Although the literary collections focus largely on New England writers, SCUA has acquired valuable collections for William Morris and William Butler Yeats, signed first editions of works by Thomas Mann, and collections of French and Scottish writers.

Local and regional histories, pamphlets and books, mainly by or about Massachusetts persons beginning in the 18th century. These include an array of election, ordination, installation, dedication, fast-day, mission, farewell, and funeral sermons; Fourth of July orations; and addresses to or sponsored by some 45 Massachusetts societies, etc. SCUA also collects rural New England imprints from the 18th and 19th centuries.

The Binet and Brabançonne Collections contain several hundred books, pamphlets, and manuscripts relating to revolutionary era France, Belgium, and Switzerland (1789-1848).

The Harold J. Gordon Collection contains books and pamphlets on German politics, history, and propaganda, documenting the Revolution of 1918, the Weimar Republic, and the National Socialist period. The collection is strong in materials documenting the Freikorps, the establishment of the Reichswehr, the impact of the Versailles Treaty, the Kapp Putsch, and the rise of the Nazis.

A rapidly growing collection of works printed in East Germany , with emphasis on the arts. The collection is being developed in collaboration with our partners in the DEFA Film Library.

Over 1,500 unique titles published by the underground press during the 1970s and 1980s, collected by Solidarity activist, Basia Jakubowska. The collection includes a startling array of publications, from fliers, handbills, and ephemera to translations of foreign literature, newspapers and periodicals, a science fiction magazine, and instructions on how to run a small press. Most were published by Solidarity workers in Warsaw, but the collection includes material gathered from other cities, including Gdansk, Krakow, and Wroclaw.

The Kress Collection includes over 3,000 pamphlets on British and American politics, economy, and culture from the late 18th through the mid-19th century. The collection includes important works reflecting the British reaction to the French Revolution, and the evolution of British political culture and political economy between the end of the American Revolution and the reforms of the 1830s. The collection also includes miscellaneous Restoration-era pamphlets, a few early Georgian British treaties, and tracts on taxation, agriculture, technology, and industry.

Pamphlets and books with an emphasis on anti-slavery movements in New England, 1725-1911. The holdings include speeches, sermons, proceedings of meetings, the publications of organizations such as the American Anti-Slavery Society and the American Colonization Society, and a smaller selection of pro-slavery tracts.

Massachusetts Agricultural College postcard The John P. Roche and Steven Siteman Collections focus on the American left from the late 19th century through the 1950s, with some European materials and materials from the political right. Approximately 120 publishers are represented in these collections, primarily political and social interest groups, political parties (especially various Socialist and Communist parties), ad hoc committees, labor unions, educational organizations, religious bodies, and official and unofficial Communist and Marxist publishing houses, 1866-ca. 1955. There are smaller pamphlet collections for American anti-imperialism and antiracism.