Participants in the rope pull, ca.1913
The Department of Special Collections and University Archives is a center for research in the history and impact of social change and the history of western New England. With substantial holdings in African American history and culture, social and racial justice, agriculture, the environment, and labor, the Department houses approximately 30,000
rare books, nationally significant
manuscript collections,
historic maps, and the official
records of the University of Massachusetts Amherst, SCUA offers material of interest to a wide range of researchers, from undergraduates to academics, and journalists to family historians. It is a growing collection used by an international audience of students, scholars, and other members of the general public.
Beyond the major areas of collecting interest, SCUA has developed depth in areas as diverse as the Revolutionary-era France and Belgium (1789-1848), Scottish literature, American involvement in Meiji-era Japan and the post-war study of Japanese culture, eastern European ethnography, and the literature of American Socialism.
The Department's manuscript and archival collections are exhaustively listed in our online catalog,
UMarmot, and most are cross listed in the general
Library catalog.
UMarmot includes brief summary descriptions of each collection with links, when available, to complete finding aids and other electronic resources. Our finding aids are also listed on the
Five College Archives and Manuscript Collections website.
Image galleries
Photographic collections held by SCUA are described in UMarmot and selected images from these are made available through our Image Galleries. The galleries page also includes a search box for images of UMass Amherst and the university community.
Information about our holdings of printed materials, including books, pamphlets, periodicals, and historic maps, is located in the Library's on-line catalog. Descriptions of the major book collections (though not the titles themselves) are indexed in UMarmot.
