Archives & Special Collections
Archives & Special Collections is your portal to the University's archives, rare books, manuscripts, historic photos, artifacts, and much more.
We preserve the history of Santa Clara University, assist students in developing unique research projects, and provide hands-on learning experiences. We have a variety of types of collections, and a variety of tools for identifying and using our collections. Some options are described on this page, but please reach out if you have a specific research inquiry.
Research Support
Locating Materials
Conduct a keyword search in OSCAR, the library's catalog, for Archives & Special Collections holdings:
To search by title, author, or other field, do an advanced search and limit to Location: University Library Archives & Special Collections.
Digital Collections
We have scanned nearly 45,000 images and documents from our collections for you to access online. Search across all collections, or target your search to some of the popular collections listed below.
- The Santa Clara Student Newspaper
- SCU Yearbooks
- SCU Course Catalogs
- Mission Santa Clara Manuscripts
- Mission Santa Clara Sacramental Records
- Full text scans of baptism, marriage, and burial records. Click Browse All at top of page to replicate the experience of leafing through the bound records by hand.
We're open for research.
Materials may be viewed in the Norman F. Martin, S.J. Reading Room. We're usually open 10 am - 7 pm Monday through Friday, but check the Archives & Special Collections calendar and contact us ahead of time to schedule your visit. We need advanced notice to pull materials and to provide research assistance.
To further ready yourself for your research visit, please register as a researcher ahead of arriving.
The Norman F. Martin, S.J. Reading Room is located on the third floor of the Harrington Learning Commons in room 310.
Today
Arthur's Attic
Arthur's Attic is the blog of Archives & Special Collections, where we share interesting items and discuss topics related to our collections. The blog is named after Arthur Spearman, University Archivist from 1957-1977, who we attribute to assembling many of our bedrock collections.