This collection includes extensive holdings in 19th and 20th century American Literature, including first editions of authors such as Walt Whitman, Robert Frost, and Marianne Moore. In addition to published materials, the collection encompasses archival collections from 20th century American writers, such as Anne Waldman, Marge Piercy, and Nicholas Delbanco.

Special Collections Research Center

Illustrations, books, and materials by or about Jewish-American, Polish born artist Arthur Szyk (1894-1951) housed at the Special Collections Research Center as well as in other collections at the U-M Library.

Special Collections Research Center

Our large collection of artists’ books spans two locations and contains important examples from the last forty years of the field, including many well-known artists and presses. The AAEL collection leans toward the sculptural and the art object, while the SCRC materials focus more on the intersection with literature, poetry, and fine press. There is a significant collection of Cuban artists’ books, particularly those by Rolando Estévez, and a nearly complete collection of Women’s Studio Workshop titles. Work by women artists and regional artists has long been a collecting priority, and recently the AAEL collection in particular has become much more diverse.

Art, Architecture and Engineering Library and Special Collections Research Center

Includes works by Jerusalem School movement artists Ephraim Moses Lilien, Zeev Raban, Jacob Steinhardt, Menachem Shemi, Abel Pann, and others. Housed mainly in the Jewish Heritage Collection (JHC). 

Special Collections Research Center

The University Library is home to two related but distinct collections of children’s literature. The Children’s Literature Collection on the 3rd floor of the Hatcher Graduate Library South gathers together children’s and young adult literature, with special consideration to award-winners, books about diversity and inclusion, and titles with a Michigan connection. This is a circulating collection of materials that can be checked out. The Special Collections Research Center’s Children’s Literature Collection focuses on illustrated fiction, with strengths in Newbery and Caldecott medal winners, Michigan authors and illustrators, and fairy tales. This collection also includes a limited number of archival collections, such as those associated with the Lee Walp Family Juvenile Book Collection, which includes extensive correspondence with many illustrators and authors. 

Special Collections Research Center

One of the largest collections on Chinese studies, Japanese studies, and Korean studies in North America. Collection materials document histories, cultural diversity, and linguistic landscape in East Asia. Some of the collection highlights include the Chinese Dance Collection and performing arts program collection, Japanese music and screen arts, and Korean popular culture.

Asia Library

Collection of 20th century kit-house catalogs which focus on residential construction in the Midwest from the 1910s through the post-war building boom of the 1950s and 60s. The catalogs tell many stories, including the historical story of Michigan’s industrial past transitioning from lumber to automobile; an architectural story about changing patterns and arrangements of domestic space; a sociological story of the gender roles within and outside the household; a racial story of exclusion and expectations; an urban story of the development of suburbia; and a technological story as appliances were integrated into the home.

Art, Architecture, and Engineering Library

The Islamic Manuscripts Collection covers subjects including the Qur’an and its sciences, hadith, theology, jurisprudence (fiqh), Sufism, philosophy, mathematics, astronomy, rhetoric, grammar, poetry, history, geography, and medicine. It consists of more than 1,100 volumes, plus a small number of fragments, dating from the 8th to the early 20th century and containing roughly 1,800 texts primarily in Arabic, Persian, and Ottoman Turkish. The collection includes a significant number of pieces by well-known Ottoman masters of calligraphy. Most of the manuscripts were produced and circulated in Islamicate areas of the Middle East and North Africa. 

Special Collections Research Center

A diverse collection of materials on the American culinary experience. Holdings cover the production, promotion, preparation, presentation, consumption, and appreciation of food and drink in America. Particular strengths include 19th and early 20th century cookbooks, charity cookbooks, immigrant cookbooks, food-related advertising ephemera, and restaurant menus. These materials offer insight into questions surrounding identity, consumption, work, leisure, the family, social relations, and much else in American life.

Special Collections Research Center

One of the oldest, largest, and most comprehensive collections of its kind, with materials on anarchism, anti-colonialist movements, antiwar and pacifist movements, atheism and free thought, civil liberties and civil rights, ecology, labor and workers’ rights, feminism, LGBTQ movements, prisons and prisoners, the New Left, the Spanish Civil War, and youth and student protest.

Special Collections Research Center

In 2020, famed art critic Lucy Lippard donated her slide collection to the U-M Library. There are approximately 7,000 slides in the collection, many of them organized by Lippard into categories that she used to prepare for her books and lectures over the years. There is a significant number of slides of Native American artists as well as many women artists and artists active in the feminist movements of the 20th century. This collection has not been processed or digitized, and so a researcher would be the first to get to work with the materials. 

Art, Architecture and Engineering Library

Extensive collection of maps and atlases from all parts of the world, dating from the 16th century through the present day. Regional strengths include the Great Lakes region and the northeast; South Asia and Japan; Eurasia; the Mediterranean world; and parts of Europe such as Ireland, Great Britain, France, Italy, Spain, and Greece. Subject strengths include topographic maps, nautical charts, archaeology, travel, forestry, aeronautics, road maps and views, and much more. 

Clark Library

Works by and about Maurice Bernard Sendak (1928–2012) housed in the Special Collections Research Center. Sendak was an American author and illustrator of children’s books. He became most widely known for his book Where the Wild Things Are, first published in 1963. Born to Polish-Jewish parents, his childhood was affected by the death of many of his family members during the Holocaust.

Special Collections Research Center

Postcards from the Philippines sent by American soldiers during the Philippine-American War and thereafter. Contains a number of items documenting what the soldiers saw for the first time in regard to the space, environment, and social conditions of the Filipinos. They also demonstrate the use of photography at the time. This collection has not been processed or digitized.

Special Collections Research Center

This collection documents film production through the papers of notable independent filmmakers, including Orson Welles, Robert Altman, Alan Rudolph, Nancy Savoca, John Sayles, and Jonathan Demme, as well as distributors Ira Deutchman and Robert Shaye. Materials consist primarily of scripts in various drafts and versions, production documents including correspondence and financial records, on-set photographs and film stills, publicity and reception materials, and material related to unproduced, unfinished, and incomplete projects.

Special Collections Research Center

Variety of published materials and archival collections relevant to theatre history, particularly but not exclusively in the United States. Of particular interest is an in-depth view of the Little Theatre Movement and the history of American puppet theatre (Ellen Van Volkenburg and Maurice Browne papers); 20th century costume design, including several Shakespearean productions (Zelma Weisfeld Archive) and sound design during a period of technological change in the late 20th and early 21st century (Dan Moses Schreier Collection).

Special Collections Research Center

The transportation history collection is a unique body of published and archival material on various modes of transportation and the infrastructure that supports them. These include automobiles, ballooning and dirigibles, bicycles, bridges, canals, carriages and coaches, roads and highways, and, most notably, railroads, including American, Canadian, Mexican, British, French, German, and Russian railroad companies and their rolling stock. The collection was established in 1923 by John S. Worley (1876-1956) when he came to the University to head the newly created Department of Transportation and Railway Engineering.

Special Collections Research Center

Former library director, William A. Gosling, amassed an enormous collection of pop-up books, including historical examples and items from the past half century of production. He donated these to the library, forming the basis of one of the largest pop-up book collections in the country. There are approximately 2500 books, including all (or nearly all) of the pop-ups produced by well-known artists like Robert Sabuda and David A. Carter. Most of the books were originally intended for children, but there are also pop-ups created for adult audiences as well as those that overlap conceptually with the artists’ books collection.

Special Collections Research Center

Extensive collection of musical works by more than 700 women composers. With the exception of several dozen 18th-century works, the music is almost evenly divided between the 19th and 20th centuries. Songs and solo piano music predominate, though choral, orchestral, dramatic, and chamber music are also represented; much of the content is rare or even unique.

Music Library