Special Collections and University Archives

The University of Maryland Libraries announces the debut of a significant, newly digitized collection, making available online for the first time tens of thousands of records documenting the intersection of the labor and civil rights movements in the United States. Featuring materials from the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organization (AFL-CIO)’s National Office and Southeast Division, these records are held respectively by the University of Maryland (UMD) and Georgia State University (GSU).

A group of undergraduate students have created a limited podcast series using archives from the Hornbake Library. The series, With Love & Struggle—researched and written by Janete Amaya, Hannah Bray, Maliyah Daniels, Ashley Mazur, Katherine Guerrero Rivera, Viviane Stackhouse, and Fibee Ybanez—dives into the Libraries’ archival collection of Off Our Backs, an underground feminist magazine that ran from 1970 to 2008.

The University of Maryland Libraries is excited to announce the acquisition of Ford’s Theatre records. The Ford’s Theatre records will be archived with Special Collections in Performing Arts (SCPA) and located in the Michelle Smith Performing Arts Library.

The UMD Libraries is pleased to announce that Lae’l Hughes-Watkins has been named the inaugural Associate Director for Engagement, Inclusion, and Reparative Archiving in Special Collections and University Archives (SCUA). Hughes-Watkins assumes this new leadership role after serving for over three years as University Archivist. (A search to fill the now-vacant archivist role will be conducted soon.)

The archives of Mass Media & Culture (MMC) in Special Collections and University Archives is pleased to announce that 17 episodes of the groundbreaking program PowerPoint are now available for streaming in UMD Libraries Digital Collections.

COLLEGE PARK – University of Maryland alumnus John A. Jenkins ’72, an accomplished publisher, journalist, author and entrepreneur, has donated a collection of historic papers to UMD Libraries documenting his remarkable career.

Available in the Maryland Room of Hornbake Library, this collection of material from our archives invites the University of Maryland community to explore some of the revolutionary and transformative literature in our collections created by changemakers throughout the African diaspora who challenged an oppressive status quo. Read more about the exhibit.

The University Archives has added eight new titles to the Student Newspapers Database as well as expanded access to The DiamondBack. New titles include Ha-Koach, Expression, Hanoori, Public Asian and it's three predecessor papers 14%, 15% and Public Asian, and the La Voz Latina. Read the full update from the University Archives.

Special Collections in Performing Arts (SCPA) at the University of Maryland (UMD) has released a new scripted podcast, Not a Quiet Place: Exploring Special Collections in Performing Arts.

The UMD Libraries WikiProject, an effort to link data to related content from the Libraries’ archival collections, has surpassed editing its 1000th item on Wikidata. These valuable resources are now more discoverable by scholars across the globe.