Special Collections

Special Collections is the administrative division that oversees the library’s rare, fragile, archival, or other holdings needing special care. Our goal is to make these materials accessible to researchers while preserving the items for posterity.

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*The Victor H. and Margaret A. Schiro Reading Room (Room 202 Jones Hall) serves the Louisiana Research Collection, University Archives, and Rare Books.

The Hogan Jazz Archive is a renowned resource for New Orleans Jazz research. The collection includes oral histories, recorded music, photographs and film, and sheet music and orchestrations. It also maintains files of manuscripts, clippings, and bibliographic references; vintage and contemporary books and periodicals; and discographies and encyclopedias.

The Louisiana Research Collection (LaRC) is the most comprehensive and possibly largest research library and archives for New Orleans and possibly the second largest for Louisiana as a whole. LaRC provides a full range of library and archival research resources for studying Louisiana, from books and manuscripts to maps and images.

The Southeastern Architectural Archive is the largest repository of architectural records in the southern United States. Established in 1980, the SEAA has progressively sought to enhance the preservation and conservation of architectural records associated with the built environment of the southeastern Gulf Region.

The University Archives preserves the official records of Tulane University. It holds over 4,000 linear feet of materials -- primarily documents, but also honors, master’s and doctoral theses, 35,000 photographs and slides, 55,000 photographic negatives, Tulane publications, vertical files, and more.

The library also has approximately 50,000 Rare Books, including a leaf of the Gutenberg Bible (ca. 1456) as well as strong collections in the American Revolution, American travel accounts, British shire histories, Romanov history and travel, Lafcadio Hearn, and much more.