Special Collections & Archives Guide

What do we do?

Special Collections and University Archives staff help engage students, faculty, staff, and the general public with our collections in a number of ways:

• Instruction: We host several class sessions per year, many with embedded course requirements and spread across multiple disciplines and departments. We specialize in active-learning with primary sources, both in-person and in the online learning environment.
• Research Consultations and Services: Reference services are a core part of Special Collections work. Our staff is readily available to provide one-to-one consultation on research projects at any stage of the research process. 
• Community Engagement: Our staff partner with other Libraries' staff, students, faculty, and members of the community on events, exhibitions, digitization initiatives, publications, digital humanities projects, etc.

What do we collect?

• Special Collections: Our special collections cover a wide variety or topics. Some are oral histories by ground-breaking women in the Civil Rights Movement. Other materials include correspondence, maps, and reports from military and diplomatic leaders. Some collections encompass visual materials, such as posters, photographs, or artifacts that serve as evidence of material culture at a turning point in history. 
• University Archives: These collections serve as the memory of ODU, and include thousands of photographs of university life, oral histories, faculty and administrative papers, posters, newspapers, oral histories, film, scrapbooks, etc.
• Rare book and artifacts: Examples include signed artist books, local historical volumes, rare poetry and fiction books, journals and newspapers, ancient artifacts, recording equipment, etc. 

Our locations on campus

• Special Collections & University Archives in Perry Library Located on the 3rd floor of Perry Library, our main special collections location contains records of enduring value to the University, state, and nation. This location is open to the public Monday-Friday from 9:00-4:30. Changes in hours can be found on the libraries' calendar. More information can be found at: https://www.odu.edu/library/special-collections
• F. Ludwig Diehn Composers Room Music Special Collections
  • Located alongside the Music Library in the Diehn Center for the Performing Arts, this collections specializes in historical and 
  • contemporary 
  • music collections by composers, conductors, musicians, etc. Access to this location is by appointment only. For further details, including requesting an appointment: https://www.odu.edu/library/diehn 
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