Research Guides
Collections of unpublished personal papers, organizational records, and historical photographs are described and inventoried in detailed guides known as finding aids. A finding aid helps the researcher to identify boxes or folders of interest that may be retrieved from the stacks for study.
Prepared by the staff, the typical finding aid provides background information on the organization, person, or family who created the papers or photographs, an overview of the collection and its arrangement, and a detailed container list.
Not all of our finding aids are currently available online. If you don't see what you are looking for, please be sure to check with Reference Services for assistance.
Detailed listing of Special Collections Search Tools including online databases, digitized collections and bibliographies.
Some of the collections are not listed in the online finding aids. Searching the Libraries online catalog provides another point of access into our collections.
To get an effective search of Special Collections, constrain the catalog to “UW Special Collections” in the drop down menu next to the search bar. Note: you cannot apply this constraint from the home page of the library.