It’s been a busy few months here in Special Collections. While many Houstonians flocked to beaches and waterparks, researchers beat the heat by spending long hours in our air-conditioned Reading Room. Our team of Librarians and Archivists, meanwhile, buckled down to make more collections available and to update our offerings.

Archival Collections:

A couple of the new finding aids worth checking out are the Houston Hip Hop Recording Artists Collection and the UH Women’s Resource Center Records. And collections incorporating new material into revised finding aids include the Women in the Visual and Literary Arts Records and the Houston Area Women’s Center Photographs.

Website:

The Special Collections website has also undergone a facelift this summer, with new pages highlighting some of our collecting areas: Architecture & Planning; Contemporary Literature; Hispanic Collections; Houston & Texas History; Performing Arts; and University Archives.

Comings and Goings:

We wished farewell this summer to Alison Clemens, our Houston and Texas History Archives Fellow who took a permanent position at Yale University’s Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library. This week, we welcome our new Houston Arts & History Archives Fellow, Stacey Lavender, who comes to us from the University of Michigan.

General Info:

Remember, here in Special Collections we have a number of tools to help with your classwork or research. We collect, preserve, and make available archives, rare books, and other great materials of cultural and historical significance. So if you need to use primary sources, be sure to check us out.

Our summer hours (Mon-Fri, 9am-5pm) continue through September 6. On September 7, we’ll start our fall hours, which means we’ll also be open most Saturdays from 12n-4pm. If you plan to visit our Reading Room and aren’t sure when we’re open, you can always check out our hours online.

Welcome back to school, Coogs!