Special Collections

What’s happening in Special Collections? Follow along with the staff and students’ projects.

Pictures & Conversations: Featuring new acquisitions and Special Collections news.

Out of the Box: CCEPS students share updates on their projects as they explore specific collections.

Special Collections is the library’s principal repository for print and manuscript primary sources. The collections number nearly 200,000 volumes and more than 11,000 linear feet of a diverse array of literary and historical manuscripts, personal papers, and college archives that span more than 900 years of human history. The collections are available for research, teaching, and study in person, and, increasingly, digitally in the Claremont Colleges Digital Library. We provide an array of research support and instruction services to the students, faculty, and staff of The Claremont Colleges and the wider scholarly community; we partner with faculty and our library colleagues on course-integrated instruction, and we provide students opportunities to engage with and utilize primary sources in their research.

Special Collections has a close relationship with the Ella Strong Denison Library at Scripps College, housed in the uniquely beautiful, historic Kaufmann Wing of the library building. Denison Library offers a wide variety of primary resources to The Claremont Colleges and wider community of scholars. Subject strengths include fine printing and artists’ books, women’s history, literature, and art. Denison holds the papers for the College’s founder, Ellen Browning Scripps, as well as the Scripps College archives.