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Special Collections University Archives subject collection title
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The Art of Gaming +

Nevada Schools:
Staking a Claim on Education

Dishin' the Old Political Dirt
What Really Happened in Nevada Politics

Nevada Writers Hall of Fame: 25th anniversary

Special Collections has been involved in several ways with preparations for the gala event on November 8th celebrating the first 25 years of the Nevada Writers Hall of Fame. Due to a large response, the event itself has been moved to the Raggio Building, but a special exhibit featuring some of the Hall of Fame authors and their works is located in the Whittemore Gallery on the first floor of the Mathewson-IGT Knowledge Center. Special Collections also contributed photographs and biographical information to a commemorative booklet that will be available at the event. A Special Collections intern, Amelia Thibault, has been updated the bibliographies for Hall of Fame writers. Photo from the Virginia Coffman papers in Special Collections.

Happy Anniversary, Phi Kappa Phi!

An exhibit case near the south entrance of the Mathewson-IGT Knowledge Center features University Archives photographs and documents relating to the University of Nevada, Reno chapter of the Phi Kappa Phi honor society, which this year celebrates its 100th anniversary on campus. Many of the students and faculty who were inducted into the society are well-known figures in Nevada history.

New Exhibit: Politics of Our Past

Through the use of selected photographs and manuscript materials held in Special Collections, this third floor exhibit highlights Nevada's democratic processes and the decisions made that influenced our future. It celebrates the candidates and their successful, as well as unsuccessful, campaigns for public office at the various levels of government. As usual, admission is free! Hours are Monday through Friday, 9 a.m.–5 p.m. Call us for more information at 775-682-5665.

University Archives Guides are Searchable!

Guides to our vast collection of materials documenting the history of the university are now available to browse or search on our website.

Reading Room Hours Extended

Special Collections goes Social

A Facebook page for Special Collections keeps our researchers and friends up to date on the latest events, exhibits, and new collections. Facebook users who "like" the page will get updates in their news feeds. If you prefer Twitter, you can follow @unrSpC to receive our Facebook updates as tweets.Facebook pages for University of Nevada Alumni Joe McDonald and Leola Lewis continue to share the latest news from the campus and town in 1913, as Leola begins her teaching job in a one-room school south of Reno and Joe returns to the university as a Junior after working in Tonopah in the mining industry for the summer. Leola currently has 810 fans and Joe has 769.

Closing Soon: Far Out! The University Art Scene | Reno, Nevada 1960–1975

The current Special Collections exhibition will close September 9th. Far Out, featuring the works of 35 local artists active on the University art scene in the 1960s and early 1970s, is located throughout the Knowledge Center. Pick up a free copy of the 68-page accompanying booklet, made possible by a grant from Nevada Humanities and a gift from Molly Toral. Information about the artists and their scene is also available in our Online Exhibit.

Sagebrush Conversations with Local Researchers

In conjunction with our current exhibit "Where the Sage Meets the Sky," Special Collections is proud to host Sagebrush Conversations, a series of stimulating free talks relating to the Great Basin environment by eight distinguished local authors and researchers. All sessions will be held in the Faculty and Graduate Room on the 4th floor of the Knowledge Center, and free parking is available. More information

• Sunday, Feb. 26, 3:00 p.m.
  -"Mapping the Great Basin" Linda, Newman, UNR Geoscience & Map Librarian Emerita
  -"Searching the Big Empty," William L. Fox, Director, Center of Art + Environment at the Nevada Museum of Art
• Wednesday, Feb. 29, 7:00 p.m.
  "Collecting Testimonials About Wild Nevada," Scott Slovic, Director, UNR Core Writing Program, English Dept., and Roberta Moore, Ranger (retired), Great Basin National Park
• Wednesday, March 7, 7:00 p.m.
  "Photographing and Mapping the Black Rock Desert," Peter Goin, UNR Professor & Chair, Art Dept., and Paul Starrs, UNR Professor & Chair, Geography Dept.
• Sunday, March 11, 3:00 p.m.
  -"Nevada's Changing Wildlife Habitat," Sherman Swanson, UNR Professor, Department of Environmental & Resource Sciences
  -"Nevada's Environmental Legacy," James W. Hulse, UNR Professor of History Emeritus
  

 

Where the Sage Meets the Sky: Great Basin Landscapes

Opening in October-and running through April 20, 2012, the Special Collections Department hosts an exhibit offering a wide-ranging view of Nevada's landscapes: Where the Sage Meets the Sky: Great Basin Landscapes. Through the use of maps, photographs, films, letters and writings from Special Collections, the exhibit presents views of Nevada's past still relevant to today's understanding of our extreme, yet beautiful land. The exhibit is free and open to the public. Coming in 2012: "Sagebrush Conversations" with local experts and authors.

Valentines!

Edw Martinez, former chair and emeritus faculty member of the Art Department and an acclaimed printmaker, is famous for his annual Valentine prints. University Archives now has a set of these Valentines, dating back to 1974, thanks to a donation by Jim McCormick (another former Art Dept. chair and emeritus faculty member and acclaimed artist) and his wife, Loretta Terlizzi.

A small exhibit in the breezeway on the second (main) floor of the Knowledge Center through February provides more information, along with commentary by Nevada Writers Hall of Fame author William Fox. Exhibit hours vary according to the Knowledge Center schedule. Other Martinez valentines will be on display in the Special Collections Reading Room, Monday through Friday, 9am to 4pm, through February 17th.

Happy 100th Birthday, Manzanita Lake! A New Exhibit

In late November, 1911, a campus dam was completed, creating a lake in place of a small pond. Since that momentous occasion, the popular Manzanita Lake has been a center of tradition and recreation and a destination for relaxation, romance, and movie making. For historical information, see The Jewel of the University of Nevada, Reno, by public history student Douglas Boedenauer or an article in Nevada Today. Contemporary and historical photographs of the lake are included in the Campus Images collection.

A small exhibit in the breezeway on the second (main) floor of the Knowledge Center through February provides photographs and interesting facts about the history of the lake. Exhibit hours vary according to the Knowledge Center schedule. For more information contact the exhibit curator, Betty Glass.

Book Artist and Printer Peter Koch Featured

Books and prints by the well-known book designer and printer Peter Koch of San Francisco are on exhibit in the Whittemore Gallery on the first floor of the Knowledge Center through January. Visit the artist's website for additional information about his work, or contact Bob Blesse, professor of Art and the exhibit curator, for more information. Exhibit hours vary according to the Knowledge Center schedule. Peter Koch is well-represented in our rich Book Arts collection.

Photograph by Gus Bundy

Artown Exhibit: Post-War Bohemians in Northern Nevada

Mid-century Northern Nevada art was full of surprises. From July 1st through September 16th, Special Collections is sponsoring a showing of abstract and experimental works that emerged from an active arts community after World War II. Works by sixteen Northern Nevada artists are displayed on the upper floors of the Knowledge Center, and photographs and papers from our collections, in the Special Collections exhibit area, offer insights into the artists' social and creative lives.

An online exhibit and a 44-page booklet enhance the exhibit, providing previously-unpublished information about the artists and their milieu. The booklet and a self-guided itinerary are available at various locations in the Knowledge Center. Follow us on Twitter to receive tweets about the 16 bohemian artists during the last 16 days of Artown, beginning on July 16th.

As part of Reno's Artown celebration, on July 9th sons and daughters of some of the artists shared remembrances of their younger lives during a panel discussion in the Knowledge Center, and a short film from 1949, "What is Modern Art" was screened.

Update: This exhibit was spotlighted on the KRNV news. Watch the news report here.

Budget News and Service Hours

An agreement between the Library administration and the University administration resulted in the removal of Special Collections from the list of campus closures proposed by the Provost to meet the budget deficit. Special Collections will NOT close, but one part-time staff position was transfered to another department. The reduction in staffing requires an adjustment of the reading room hours. The new hours are 9:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. Monday through Friday. Other hours are possible by appointment. A strong show of support from faculty, students, researchers and donors of Special Collections was instrumental in the successful outcome.

New Exhibit: WOW! You Have That Here?

Treasures and Uses of Special Collections & University Archives

A new exhibit showcases just a few of the exceptional items in Special Collections including very old treasures such as a cuneiform tablet and a book by Petrarch printed in 1478 in a convent in Italy, as well as rare and unique items such as the Bible left in a California cave by an emigrant during an overland journey in 1849, the beautifully bound Book of the Oath signed by all UNR graduates from 1920 to 1965, books relating to Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain), and a 1908 photo of Reno taken from a balloon. Also on display are many of the books by researchers who have used photographs, manuscripts, maps, and other materials in Special Collections.

The exhibit is open Monday through Friday, 9 am to 5 pm on the third floor of the Mathewson-IGT Knowledge Center through June 23rd.

Dan De Quille: Correspondent

Special Collections recently received a mini-grant from Nevada Humanities to participate in a project to uncover the importance of Dan De Quille as a correspondent. De Quille (pen name of William Wright) was one of Nevada's best-known authors, who until recently has been remembered mainly for his contributions to the Virginia City Territorial Enterprise, his friendship with Mark Twain, and for The Big Bonanza, his famous book about Comstock mining. The grant pays for a student assistant to transcribe newly-collected and largely unknown handwritten personal letters to and from his friends, family and acquaintances, and "correspondent" accounts in various newspapers from the late nineteenth century.

More information

Shop Online in Special Collections

This holiday season, Special Collections makes it easy to tailor an inexpensive gift for the history enthusiast on your list.Choose a historical image (or series) from a special selection of our most popular photographs, and order a high-resolution digital copy online. Then, transfer the image to your computer and edit, print (or have printed) and frame a customized, lasting, hand-crafted gift. Selected images are restored and ready for you to print for an additional small fee. We also offer new and out-of-print used Nevada-related books and UNR yearbooks on our shopping site.

Facebook Resurrects Nevada Student

In 1911, young Joe McDonald, a freshman at the University of Nevada, probably would have had a Facebook page if he could have. Special Collections provides a new opportunity, 99 years later, for Joe (who passed away in 1971 after a successful career as a reporter, then editor, and finally the publisher of the Nevada State Journal) to have that page. A rich supply of source materials from the University Archives, the Joseph F. McDonald, Sr. photographs and manuscript collection, and his oral history allowed Drew Gerthoffer ('09 History) to project how Joe would have participated in social networking. Within a month on Facebook, Joe already had 22 friends, most of them his enthusiastic descendents. Visit his page on Facebook to friend him and keep up with his past.

Revisiting Will James Haunts and Legacy

A group of about 20 local history enthusiasts met at the Knowledge Center on Sunday, October 3rd for a Will James afternoon. After a screening of the documentary film "The Man They Call Will James" by local filmmaker Gwen Clancy, a car caravan transported participants back in time to the places in the Washoe Valley where Will James lived, worked as a ranch hand, wrote, and drew, including a rare opportunity to see the cabin where he and his wife Alice made their first home and where he wrote his Newbery-award-winning book Smoky. Tour guides were Gwen Clancy and Pat Klos. After the auto tour, participants visited Special Collections to view our entire Will James collections of photographs, letters, manuscripts, books, and original art.

New Exhibit: Honoring the Horse

Exhibit areas on the first and third floors pay tribute to the horses that have helped shape Nevada's history and image, and some of the people who were their advocates and storytellers. Cases and walls in the Whittemore Gallery on the first floor feature horses in books and movies, including The Misfits, filmed in the Reno area 50 years ago. On the third floor in the Special Collections Department, exhibit areas feature  horses on guest ranches and at summer camp and portray the many contributions of working horses. Viewers will find information on the 150th anniversary of the Pony Express, rodeo horses, and various horse breeds, as well as horse-oriented student organizations at UNR. Also on display are materials relating to the historical role of Reno's "Wild Horse Annie" and local photographer Gus Bundy in the fight to protect wild horses in the West from inhumane treatment. The first floor exhibits are open when the building is open. Third floor exhibits are open Monday through Friday, 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. (above photo by Gus Bundy).

University Budget News

As many people have heard, Special Collections is one of the units on campus that would be closed as part of the Provost's proposal to reduce expenses to cover the university's budget shortfall of $59 million.The department is preparing a response that is due April 1st to the Curricular Review Committee charged to evaluate the proposal. For more information, please contact Donnie Curtis.

Online Exhibit Highlights Special Collections Photos of Historic Fight

Special Collections and the Nevada Historical Society have pooled their resources to present an informative online exhibit commemorating the 100th anniversary of the Johnson-Jeffries fight in July 1910 in Reno. The exhibit highlights 140 photographs from both collections, including a 360 degree panorama of the crowd in the stands prior to the fight. In conjunction with the exhibit, the library is sponsoring free showings of two films, the Ken Burns documentary Unforgiveable Blackness: The Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson in two parts on July 19th and 20th, and The Great White Hope, a 1970 biopic starring James Earl Jones as Jack Johnson on July 22. All showings begin at 6:00 p.m.

About This Page

• Direct Questions to: Donnelyn Curtis
• Last Updated: 07 June 2013