A summary of our collecting strengths is listed below, but researchers can also find detailed information about our collections through two platforms:
ArchivesSpace: This database features finding aids for our manuscript collections, which include inventories that describe the contents inside each collections' boxes and folders, sometimes even down to the item level. The database is searchable via keywords and subject headings.
Library Catalog: The catalog is most useful for researchers looking for items in our rare books collections. The catalog is searchable using keywords, author names, and titles.
The Contini-Volterra photographic archive database contains over 50,000 photographs of art objects created in Europe during the 13th through 20th centuries. It is especially strong in Italian art of the 13th through 18th centuries, offering a breadth and depth of coverage of each major Italian region and featuring both major (Botticelli, Tintoretto) as well as lesser known (Turino Vanni di Rigoli, Deodato Orlandi) artists of the period.
The W.T. Bandy Center for Baudelaire Modern French Studies has exceptional strength in the work of Charles Baudelaire's life, works, and related studies. The critical focus of the collection is an exhaustive bibliography of writings by and about Baudelaire, many of which are rare first editions, with additional strengths in eighteenth century French popular fiction, French poetry, and twentieth century French theatre.
Eskind Biomedical Library’s History of Medicine Collection was founded in the 1920s. Over the decades, the collection has grown to nearly 14,000 volumes of rare and historical books dating to the fifteenth century, with strengths in the history of anatomy, surgery, nephrology, botany, and nutrition. The collection also includes manuscripts on the history of nutrition and Vanderbilt, as well as hundreds of unique medical and surgical artifacts.
The journalism collections document more than a century of newspaper and television reporting by award-winning writers, photojournalists, cartoonists, editors, and publishers from such major news organizations, such as The Tennessean, The Washington Post, New York Herald, The New York Times, Chicago Tribune, and The Atlanta Journal. The largest set of journalism papers are those of John Seigenthaler, editor of The Tennessean for more than three decades.
The Colombian history and culture collection is one of the largest and most wide-ranging in the United States. Materials are grouped into three separate categories: broadsides, 1825-1972; pamphlets (including novenas), 1785-1969; and programas, 1819-1914. Current collecting strategies focus on 20th century Afro-Hispanic literature and slavery in Central America, South America and the Caribbean.
Our extensive collections in music, dance, theatre and film speak to the development of culture in the United States during the 20th century. In collaboration with the National Museum of African American Music, the Vanderbilt Libraries have developed important holdings in jazz, including the Yusef A. Lateef Collection, the John Birks “Dizzy” Gillespie Collection, and a collection of Phil Schaap’s radio shows and history of jazz recordings.
The Vanderbilt University Photographic Archive contains over 500,000 photographs relating to the history and development of the university since its founding in 1875. Some featured subjects include faculty and staff portraits, athletics, the Nashville community, World War I and II, alumni events, campus buildings and features, and student activities. The George Peabody College Photograph Collection also includes over 20,000 photographs from the school’s early beginnings as the University of Nashville to the school’s merger with Vanderbilt University in 1979.
Vanderbilt’s political collections provide key insights into the workings of the government through the pre-Senate papers of Senator Lamar Alexander, in the collection of Senator James R. Sasser, and in the documents surrounding Alexander Heard’s contributions to V.O. Key’s seminal work, Southern Politics in State and Nation (1949).
Special Collections manages the rare book collections of the Jean and Alexander Heard Libraries. The department houses one of the finest 20th century Southern literature collections in the United States and is the center for the study of the Fugitive and Agrarian literary groups. The subject matter of the rest of this extensive collection covers a wide range of topics including the American Civil War, Southern literature and civilization, playing cards and gaming, performing arts, Vanderbilt University history, George Peabody College history, Mesoamerican codices, and religion.
Vanderbilt is a focal point for nationally-significant collections on nonviolent direct action, including the papers of several key figures, such as the Reverends James Lawson and Kelly Miller Smith, as well as records from organizations, like the Southern Student Organizing Committee and the Nashville Peace and Justice Center. Also available are Robert Penn Warren's interviews with national leaders, like Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. and Stokely Carmichael, for his landmark book, Who Speaks for the Negro?, published in 1965.
Many of our collecting strengths fall within the study of Southern literature, history and culture, but further collection highlights include interviews with early country music performers, WSM Radio and Television ephemera, over 200 rare pamphlets about President Andrew Jackson and Native American removal, as well as documents regarding the Aaron Burr conspiracy and papers of Sam Houston, Davy Crockett and other early settlers.
The mission of the University Archives is to preserve the historical memory of the university and to make this information available, primarily, to the Vanderbilt community and, secondarily, to the world at large. This is achieved through the collection and preservation of historical Vanderbilt University records and artifacts. The archives has approximately 14,000 linear feet of university records ranging in time from the founding of the university to near the present day.