Smith College Special Collections is a unit within Smith College Libraries. As a special collections library, it is home to materials outside the general library collection, including rare books, archives (historic records), manuscripts, maps, oral history interviews, and audiovisual material. These materials do not circulate outside of the library and are used onsite in the Reading Room. People who engage with materials are working on a variety of projects, such as family history, fiction books, art pieces, documentaries, podcasts, academic publications, coursework, and general curiosity.
For more information about Smith College Special Collections, please visit our website.
All materials that are available for research can be viewed in the reading room. Select material has been digitized and made available online. For more information about finding digitized material, please read the Find digitized content online section of this page.
To learn how to access the collection, please visit the Search Special Collections page.
Yes! The Reading Room is open to everyone. For more information, please read our Visit Special Collections.
Finding Aids are guides for collections of archival material. They list material in boxes, usually organized in series of like materials. Materials are most often described at the folder level, not the item level. If you would like to know more about the contents of a folder, you can email specialcollections@smith.edu.
It is essential to read the main page of each individual collection or record group group. In each individual record group you can search the collection using the navigation bar on the right of the screen (or at the bottom depending on your screen size). You can search within that collection using the search bar or you can browse by expanding the different headings (series title) in the navigation bar. To expand a series title, click the arrow next to the title.
You can also search associated names, events, organizations, locations, etc. in the main finding aid page for all Smith College Special Collections (https://findingaids.smith.edu/) navigation bar and see what comes up.
Read the “Scope and Contents” and the "Biographical/Historical" notes in the finding aids for more information on each individual collection.
The catalog contains records of books and manuscripts. This includes, but is not limited to, periodicals, unique manuscripts, printed books and ephemera, and artist books. The catalog lists holdings of the Five College, so you will need to limit the "Library Location" to Smith College Special Collection.
On the main search page, you can search using a variety of filters, such as subject, keyword, author, title, or date range.
In the results list, under "Library Location" in the left panel, select "Smith College Special Collections".
Catalog records vary in detail.
For more tips on navigating the finding aids and catalog, visit our Search Special Collections page.
Select material from Smith College Special Collections has been digitized and made available online.
Digital images from the collections at Smith, Mount Holyoke, and Hampshire colleges. Images from Smith College represent materials in the College Archives, Mortimer Rare Book Collection, and Sophia Smith Collection.
To review digitized material available for each collection, click on the "View Digital Material" tab for each finding aid.
Smith College Special Collections offers digital resources that can assist your research. These resources represent a sampling of the materials in the Sophia Smith Collection of Women’s History, College Archives, and Mortimer Rare Book Collection.
Exhibits on select topics represented in Special Collections. Includes images of collection materials and contextual information.
Archived web content for Smith College including the Libraries and Special Collections.
For instructions on submitting digitization requests, please visit our Digitization & Use page
For questions about the collection, digital resources, visiting, and digitization requests
please email specialcollections@smith.edu