Library Overview

For an institution established as recently as 1960, University of California, San Diego (UCSD) has developed special collections of remarkable depth and diversity. Currently consisting of more than 250,000 books, over 500 manuscript collections, the UCSD Archives, and a multitude of items in a variety of other formats, Special Collections from its inception has worked cooperatively with UCSD faculty to build collections that support UCSD academic programs. UCSD places great emphasis on all things related to the Pacific, for example, and Mandeville Special Collections Library (MSCL) has developed the most extensive collection on pre-1850 voyages of exploration and discovery to the Pacific, the renowned Hill Collection. Extensive holdings on California history and culture, Baja California history and politics, and the anthropology and ethnography of Melanesia also contribute to the strength of the Pacific collections. Modern Spain has been a traditional focus of UCSD historians, and MSCL holds the largest extant collection on the Spanish Civil War. With contemporary American poetry a longstanding interest of the literature department, MSCL boasts the Archive for New Poetry, with an emphasis on experimental verse. Through its holdings of unique personal and professional papers, MSCL is also exceptionally strong in 20th-century science, a natural field for a university that has built its reputation on excellence in the sciences. Other areas of collecting strength include artists' books; high-altitude medicine and physiology; San Diego and border studies; culinary history of the American Southwest, Latin America, and the Pacific Rim; Western mining; early meteorology; and Chicano activism.

University of California, San Diego
Mandeville Special Collections Library
UCSD, 0175-S
9500 Gilman Drive
La Jolla, California 92093-0175
http://orpheus.ucsd.edu/speccoll/
spcoll@ucsd.edu
(858) 534-2533 (t)
(858) 534-5950 (f)