Collection highlights

Carleton Watkins (1829-1916) was one of the earliest photographers of the American West, and his photographs of Yosemite Valley contributed significantly to the protection of the land. Central to the Carleton Watkins collection at Stanford University Libraries are 157 mammoth-plate mounted albumen photographs produced by Carleton Watkins and purchased from Watkins by California Congressman, Governor, and Senator Milton Slocum Latham. Our digital presentation makes the photographs available in their original album groupings: Photographs of the Pacific Coast, Photographs of the Yosemite Valley, and Photographs of Columbia River and Oregon.

Cities are dynamic environments. Cartographers face particular challenges in accurately depicting the complex nature of urban spaces, balancing many layers of information to convey human and natural activity in one moment of time. This exhibit, curated by David Rumsey, shows how cities have been mapped over two centuries, highlighting methods used to visualize the richness of urban landscapes.

This collection comprises the personal and professional papers of climate scientist Stephen Henry Schneider (1945-2010), the late Melvin and Joan Lane Professor for Interdisciplinary Environmental Studies, Professor of Biological Sciences, Professor (by courtesy) of Civil and Environmental Engineering, and Senior Fellow in the Woods Institute for the Environment at Stanford University.

Edward F. Ricketts (1897-1948) was a marine biologist and ecologist based in Monterey, California. Among other pursuits, Ricketts operated Pacific Biological Laboratories (PBL), a marine biological supply company that sold preserved animal specimens and prepared microscopy slides. He is perhaps best known as the author of the book Between Pacific Tides, which described the ecology of hundreds of species of animals on the Pacific Coast of North America, and for being the inspiration for the fictional character of Doc in John Steinbeck’s Cannery Row series of books. This exhibit allows the visitor to recognize Ed Ricketts as a scientist and view material related to his research and methodologies.

This collection contains subject files organized by John Rawlings during the research for his book The Stanford Alpine Club (Stanford, CA, Stanford University Libraries/CSLI Publications, 1999) as well as original materials contributed by club members. Included are correspondence, photographs, maps, articles, club ephemera, clippings, copy of Rawlings' book, and text, captions, and materials from an exhibit on the Stanford Alpine Club mounted in the Stanford University Libraries. 

The Black @ Stanford Anthology, a collaboration between Stanford's Black Community Services Center and the Stanford Archives, gathers archival documentation and information on the history of Black activism and community at Stanford, from Ernest Houston Johnson, the first Black student to graduate Stanford in 1895, to the present day.

Despite being a historically white institution, Stanford has a rich Latina/o/x history. Explore the history and impact of Stanford's Latina/o/x community by tracing the story of the people and organizations who, through their actions, have enabled the community to evolve and flourish.

LGBTQIA+ people have been part of the Stanford community since its inception, whether or not they were public about their sexual preferences and identities. Although there is less documentation of queer life at Stanford than of other dominant identities, primary source material featured here provides evidence that queer life has always existed in and around the Stanford community.

From Stanford's founding to today, women have played an instrumental role in the success and growth of the university. This exhibit documents the history of women at Stanford, featuring numerous administrators, faculty members, and research centers as well as materials documenting students and student life, athletics, and activism.

This exhibit serves as a portal into the many digitized Stanford Historical Society (SHS) resources published since 1976 and housed in the Stanford Libraries Digital Repository: past issues of Sandstone & Tile (formerly Stanford Historical Society Newsletter), program recordings, and oral history recordings and transcripts. New digital resources are being added to the exhibit as they become available.

Cheryl D. Holmes Miller (born 1952) is a graphic designer and racial, cultural, and gender equity advocate. She attended the Rhode Island School of Design, graduated from Maryland College of Art, and earned her graduate degree in Communications Design from the Pratt Institute School of Art and Design. She founded her own company, Cheryl Miller Design, Inc., and worked with clients such as BET, Essence, Time, Chase, American Express, and many others. Her firm has also worked for non-profit organizations such as the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation, Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, NAACP, Legal Defense Fund, the United Negro College Fund, the Studio Museum in Harlem, and the YWCA.

The papers of Bay Area Japanese American artist and educator Ruth Asawa document her art and commissions as well as her involvement in arts education, civic art, and art administration. The collection contains correspondence, notes, portfolios, exhibition notices and other ephemera, publications, design sketches and plans, photographs, and audiovisual media.

The papers include the personal and professional materials of Latina Californian photographer Laura Aguilar. The collection includes correspondence, exhibition files, and original prints of three of Aguilar's photographic series: Latina Lesbians, Plush Pony, and Clothed/Unclothed.

This collection contains photographs, prints, scrapbooks, negatives, posters, printed material, artwork and ephemera relating to May's Photography Studio and Chinese and Asian-American art, culture, and theater in San Francisco's Chinatown, circa early-mid 20th century.

This collection preserves photographic work by Arthur Tress (born 1940), an American photographer who has had an extremely active career and is well published, with much of his work incorporating his role as both director and photographer. Tress’s photographs engage a rich visual symbolism, and over the course of his career his work has been constantly inventive, often playful, and always psychologically probing.

The Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF) records contain the administrative records, litigation files, and special program files of one of the most influential and effective civil rights organizations focused on defining and protecting the civil rights of Mexican Americans throughout the United States.

The Dr. Huey P. Newton Foundation Inc. collection contains Huey P. Newton's personal papers including correspondence, manuscripts, legal case files, education papers, speeches, interviews, and lectures. Importantly, the collection also contains the internal documents generated by the activities of the Black Panther Party, including materials documenting the Party’s community programs as well as documents and various legal cases involving members of the Party, the records of David Hilliard, and Federal Bureau of Investigation documents attained through the Freedom of Information Act. The collection also contains photographs, audiovisual materials, newspaper clippings, and records of the Newton Foundation.

The records of the National United Committee to Free Angela Davis (circa 1970-1972) contains an enormous number of support letters from around the world, the majority coming from East Germany and the Soviet Union, demonstrating global opinion about her incarceration and trial in California. The collection also contains some of the organization's administrative records, publications, and correspondence with a variety of other political organizations. There is a small amount of material by Davis herself.

This is a comprehensive database of international criminal tribunal records, covering post-World War II cases through to contemporary tribunals, fully digitized and rendered searchable online. Currently available through the Virtual Tribunals initiative are the following collections: International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg (IMT); World War II U.S. Army Courts, Europe; World War II U.S. Army Courts, Asia-Pacific; Special Panels for Serious Crimes, East Timor (SPSC); and Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL).

This digital collection preserves archived websites and social media from selected grassroots non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in China. It currently includes complete captures of two hundred NGOs across six sectors—gender, environment, education, labor, rural development, and health—dating back to 2015. These organizations have now quietly faded into the past, and their websites and social media accounts have been deleted. The captured content of this project serves as a historical archive, a testament to the once vibrant social advocacy for change, and a hopeful symbol of the emerging civic society.

The Richard (Ric) Weiland papers document the life and work of a Stanford alumnus and early Microsoft employee who played a key role in the company’s development. Weiland was also a pioneering philanthropist for social justice causes centered on LGBTQ rights and activism. The collection includes documents, personal notebooks, and photographs from throughout his life and career.

In 2020, the Silicon Valley Archives launched the African American Histories in Silicon Valley oral history series. The first group of interviews, contained in this collection, resulted in over twenty hours of footage. The project is ongoing.

The Ray Dolby papers contain materials from and about Ray M. Dolby (1933-2013), the pioneering American audio engineer. In addition to personal and professional materials pertaining to Dolby's time at Ampex Corporation, his establishment of Dolby Laboratories, and the development of an audio noise reduction system, the collection includes papers from Dolby's studies at Stanford and Cambridge Universities, correspondence from his time as a UNESCO technical adviser in India, research notes and publications, trade publications, circuit drawings and schematics, memorabilia, personal and professional correspondence, and photographs.

This collection includes five oral histories with Toomas Hendrik Ilves, Luukas Ilves, Sten Tamkivi, Kersti Kaljulaid, and Anna-Maria Osula. The interviews cover the development, challenges, and opportunities of digital governance in Estonia. The interviews were produced as a joint project between Vabamu Museum of Occupations and Freedom and Stanford University Libraries, in conjunction with an exhibit on e-Estonia.

Medicine and Innovation: Oral Histories and Archive of Medical Technology is an expanding collection of unique oral history interviews that chronicle and record the histories of physicians, engineers, scientists, business leaders, investors, attorneys, and regulators who together catalyzed an industry, developed innumerable innovative technologies, and helped hundreds of millions of patients.

The John Steinbeck Collection contains manuscripts of the writer’s major and minor works, including To a God Unknown and Cannery Row. The collection also features hundreds of letters from Steinbeck, including personal, family, and professional correspondence. Notable correspondence files include Steinbeck’s letters to his longtime editor Elizabeth Otis and his letters to friends and Stanford classmates, including Katherine Beswick, Webster Street, and Carleton Sheffield. Additionally, the collection includes press coverage of Steinbeck's travels, legal papers, photographs, and other memorabilia.

The Denise Levertov papers provide a remarkable window into the life of this important English-born American poet. According to Kenneth Rexroth, Denise Levertov was "the most subtly skillful poet of her generation, the most profound, the most modest, the most moving." Her papers document the process of her writing, her relationships with others of her generation, and the role of this "poet in the world."

The Robert Creeley papers document the life work of a leading American poet of the twentieth century, one of the core members of the Black Mountain School. They also document several important movements in American poetics in the second half of the century. The papers include Creeley's personal and professional correspondence, journals, business records, personal mementos, clippings, artwork, and other documents generated and collected by him between 1950 and 1997.

The collection contains correspondence, manuscripts by Ginsberg and other poets and authors, business records, notebooks and journals, clipping files, books, periodicals, audiotapes, videotapes, photographs, and posters.

The Cherríe Moraga papers document the life work of an important lesbian Chicana poet, essayist, and playwright of the twentieth century. The papers include Moraga's personal and professional correspondence, journals, collected feminist and women of color serials, drafts, manuscripts and galleys, and final publications of her writings, as well as important essays and reviews of her work.

This work is the culmination of an international effort to recover, scan, and publicly release a collection of historic airborne radar observations of the Antarctic Ice Sheet acquired nearly a half century ago. The scanned radar sounding profiles provide high resolution views into a wide range of englacial and subglacial features with broad multi-disciplinary relevance. 

This exhibit pulls together several collections of faculty papers, administrative records, publications, photographs, and audio and video recordings documenting the history of computer science at Stanford.

Hopkins Marine Station operates as a branch of the Department of Biological Sciences of Stanford University. It occupies an exposed rocky headland named China Point, as the site was once the location of the Point Alones Chinese fishing village in Pacific Grove, California. This exhibit outlines a portion of the history of Stanford's seaside laboratory. 

The Silicon Genesis collection gathers roughly 100 oral histories and interviews with the people who conceived, built, and worked in the semiconductor industry centered in Silicon Valley since the 1950s. The project to produce these interviews began in 1995 and continues actively today. 

Mining in the West has played a critical role in the development, modernization, and industrialization of the United States. Maps, bird's eye views, cross sections, and photographs were created in abundance between 1849 and the turn of the nineteenth century to record this period of rapid change and growth in towns all over the West.