Special Collections and University Archives: Literature and the Arts

This guide to resources on literature and the arts in Special Collections and University Archives (SC/UA) focuses primarily on manuscript collections with finding aids, and serves as a gateway to discovering additional resources in SC/UA. The guide will be updated and annotated as more resources become available.

For additional materials concerning related subjects, such as artists books and juvenile books, please do a targeted advanced search in our library catalog (view instructions). For resources on music and theater, please see the popular culture subject guide. 

Thank you to Ilya Slavutskiy, PhD candidate in the Rutgers Department of History, for his work on this guide.

QuickSearch

The Rutgers Libraries catalog, known as QuickSearch, is the best place to begin your research for printed material (books, pamphlets, magazines & journals, newsletters, reports, surveys, newspapers, etc.) The QuickSearch search box can be found on the Special Collections & University Archives homepage and many other Rutgers Libraries pages.

There are also detailed instruction on the SC/UA website under “How to search the library catalog.” 

Once you conduct a broad keyword or subject search, you can limit your search to SC/UA or any other specific libraries by clicking on “Library” on the left side of the page, and selecting a specific library from the drop-down list. 

Special Collections & University Archives website

Under Research Tools and Resources, select “Search Our Collections” for information on the most comprehensive ways to search our holdings, including maps and printed New Jersey items, that are not necessarily findable through QuickSearch.

You can also browse finding aids for manuscripts and other archival collections, including materials regarding book arts and artists books, at http://www2.scc.rutgers.edu/ead/. Finding aids are simply detailed guides that allow researchers to get a sense of and locate materials in a collection of documents (in other words, not printed books, journals, maps, etc., but the records of a person, business or organization). They are used by special collections and archives globally as a standard way to create access to collections.

Some resources can also be found in RUCore, the Rutgers University Community Repository.