Special Collections and University Archives

A new program established by the University of Maryland Libraries, Truth, Reconciliation, and Understanding in the University Archives (TRU-UA), will facilitate an in-depth exploration of critical issues associated with the histories and information included in the University Archives. This campus-wide educational and outreach program will provide rich opportunities for research and scholarship as well as special events, exhibitions, and publications to engage members of the UMD community and beyond.

Over the course of the fall semester, the undergraduate students in Dr. Alicia Volk’s Japanese Art in the 20th Century colloquium class (ARTH488J) spent hours on the fourth floor of Hornbake Library. That floor houses the Gordon W. Prange Collection, a vast and unique archive of rare Japanese print media consisting of books, magazines, newspapers, posters, maps, and other printed publications that were subjected to censorship by the occupying American forces from 1945 to 1949.

The University of Maryland Libraries’ Special Collections and University Archives (SCUA) invites applications for the inaugural Katherine Anne Porter Research Award.The award provides up to $2000 to support research in the Katherine Anne Porter papers and related holdings in SCUA. Students, faculty, and researchers from the UMD community and beyond are welcome to apply.

A new exhibition has taken root in the Hornbake Library Gallery. “Homegrown: An Introduction to the Environmental Justice Movement” highlights how the environmental justice movement began with the rise of civil rights, labor, and environmentalism movements in the mid-twentieth century. 

This summer, students in the First-Year Innovation and Research Experience (FIRE) summer program led by Dr. Elizabeth Massey, the assistant clinical professor who leads FIRE’s Music and Social Identity stream, worked with Special Collections in Performing Arts (SCPA) in the Michelle Smith Performing Arts Library and Special Collections and University Archives (SCUA) in Hornbake Library to research and create an exhibit titled “Voices of the Counterculture,” focused on social and cultural themes from the 1970s.

The University of Maryland Libraries is pleased to announce a generous $2.225 million bequest from JoAnne Barry ’89 and Ken Boulton ’86/’97 that will preserve and expand the International Piano Archives at Maryland (IPAM) and pay tribute to Neil Ratliff, the inspirational leader of the Music Library at the University of Maryland from 1980 to 1994.

The University of Maryland Libraries is pleased to announce a generous gift from the sons of Abe and Irene Pollin to bolster the Capital Centre Community Archive, part of Special Collections and University Archives. The gift will fund the Abe and Irene Pollin Graduate Assistant, who will research and promote awareness of the collection and it will also establish the Abe and Irene Pollin Endowed Program Support Fund to provide lasting stability.

The University of Maryland’s 1856 Project, part of the Universities Studying Slavery consortium, has been awarded a generous $200,000 grant from the Mellon Foundation Public Knowledge program to establish a two-year research incubator program that will investigate the legacy of slavery at the university and document histories of enslaved individuals, ensuring their stories and contributions are recognized, honored and preserved.

The University of Maryland Libraries’ Special Collections in Mass Media & Culture (MMC) is proud to announce the addition of the papers of the late journalist Ann Corrick to its growing collection of material on women in broadcasting. Ann Corrick, whose voice is one of the only female correspondents in the Group W (Westinghouse) tape archives, led a remarkable career in the mid-20th century when women were rarely permitted to participate in the male-dominated fields of broadcasting and journalism.

The University of Maryland (UMD) Libraries was awarded a $322,532 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) to support an ongoing collaborative effort to digitize historic Maryland newspapers published before 1964.