Library Special Collections is the largest of the special collections units administered by the university and encompasses the following divisions: Rare Books; Manuscripts, Prints, Photographs, and Maps; Oral History; and University Archives. It acquires, organizes, preserves, and provides access to rare and unique materials in the humanities and social sciences. The holdings include three hundred…

Established in 1969, the UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center (CSRC) Library and Archive was the first library of its kind and is now the only freestanding Chicano studies library in the United States. It provides information resources, reference services, and bibliographic instruction for those seeking information on the Chicano experience. The library makes its holdings accessible to users from…

The Reading Room/Library of the Asian American Studies Center houses a significant archive on Asians and Pacific Islanders in the United States. The holdings include books, documents, printed ephemera, photographs, films, paintings, and videos that chronicle the development of Asian American communities in Los Angeles and nationwide.

UCSB professor David Gebhard (1927-1996) founded the Architecture and Design Collection in 1963. Today it is one of the largest architectural archives in North America with more than 1,000,000 drawings, as well as papers, photographs, scrapbooks, models, decorative objects, and furniture. The focus of the collection is the design and architecture of southern California from the late 19th through…

The Digital Library of the University of Southern California (formerly known as the Digital Archive, formerly known as ISLA) is an ongoing project that is building a virtual library of digitized multidisciplinary materials much of which has a focus on the Los Angeles region. Its search and retrieval software will allows these materials to be accessed using the parameters of space, time, keyword,…