Spotlight at Stanford

From the Martin Wong Foundation

Martin Wong Catalogue Raisonné (MWCR) is an online, comprehensive compilation of finished artworks by Martin Wong.

Green Library Exhibit supporting the Black Lives Matter movement

This online exhibit is a companion to the physical exhibit in Green library. It highlights stories that represent the various types of vile attacks that have terrorized Black Americans for centuries.

Data and More from Stanford's Cutting Edge Researchers

This collection includes research outputs from Stanford-associated researchers on the wide variety of topics and fields under investigation at Stanford University, including statistics, engineering, biology, chemistry, social sciences, humanities, medicine, physics, geosciences, and the environment.

Manuscripts in the Parker Library at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge

Parker Library on the Web is a digital exhibit designed to support use and study of the manuscripts in the historic Parker Library at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge.

Contact Sheets: 1976 - 1987

A digital exhibit featuring the complete archive of over 3,600 contact sheets of Andy Warhol's black and white photography from 1976-1987. The images in the collection document Warhol's daily life and feature candid portraits of celebrities and artists of the era including: Jean-Michel Basquiat, Truman Capote, Jimmy Carter, Martha Graham, Halston, Keith Haring, Debbie Harry, Bianca Jagger, Grace Jones, Jackie Kennedy, Liza Minnelli, Dolly Parton, Robert Rauschenberg, Elizabeth Taylor, Diane Von Furstenberg, and more.

The Rodolfo Lanciani Digital Archive

The "Fondo Rodolfo Lanciani" is currently housed at the Biblioteca Nazionale di Archeologia e Storia dell’Arte at Rome’s Palazzo Venezia. Assembled over the course of Lanciani’s lifetime, the collection is akin to a “paper museum” whose size and scope compare to that of the famous seventeenth century antiquarian Cassiano dal Pozzo.

The Ottoman, Safavid & Mughal Empires

Maps of Ottoman Turkey, Safavid Persia, and Mughal India ca. 1500-1800.

Exhibit documenting the history of queer students at Stanford.

10 Maps Over 200 Years

This exhibition, curated by David Rumsey, is the digital companion to a physical exhibition on display in the Rumsey Center from March 1 to May 31, 2023.

An Introduction to Finding, Analyzing, and Using Historic Maps

Please use responsibly.

International criminal tribunal records (1945-present)

Records from the proceedings of temporary or permanent criminal tribunals, the international legal bodies who hear and decide cases arising from violent conflict and mass atrocities.

Copious images document the 1949 Voortrekker Monument, Pretoria, and its colossal frieze showing the epic Voortrekker ‘Great Trek’ into Southern Africa’s interior (1835-52), the founding visual narrative of Afrikanerdom and apartheid.

Work & Social Justice

This site showcases the David Bacon Photography Archive at Stanford and provides a digital companion to the 2020 Green Library exhibit of Bacon's work titled "Work and Social Justice."

Publications, Oral Histories, and Program Recordings

Since 1976, SHS has sponsored programs, publications, tours, and oral histories on Stanford's multi-faceted history.

The Aim is Freedom: A History of Occupations and Independence in Estonia

A story of Estonia's recent history since the Second World War and occupations under Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. Based on Vabamu museum collections in Tallinn, Estonia.

A Summer School of Science

With the financial support of Timothy Hopkins, the Hopkins Seaside Laboratory was established in 1892 on a treeless plateau in Pacific Grove, California. For the next twenty-five years, the seaside laboratory offered summer instruction to visiting students from the Pacific slope and laboratory space to visiting scientists from around the globe. This exhibit tells the history of those twenty-five years.

Selections from the work of DLSS Digitization Services

See examples of the various collection materials digitized at Stanford Libraries and learn about the factors, decisions, and special processes that go into producing and presenting digital library content.

Representing Geopolitical Complexity

Digital exhibition accompanying a physical exhibition and conference of the same name taking place at the David Rumsey Map Center on May 26-27, 2022

This exhibit highlights the history of Latina/o/x students, staff and organizations at Stanford University.

An Anthology of Black Activism and Community at Stanford

A collaborative archive documenting Black activism and community at Stanford, including photographs, posters, publications, performance recordings, syllabi, and oral histories.

Together, we rise up to overcome anti-AAPI hate

An exhibit created to help the community understand the history of racism against AAPI individuals in this country. In highlighting the courage of AAPI activists of the past, we hope to inspire more people to continue the work to overcome AAPI racism.

With their own eyes || In their own words

The Tibet Oral History Project archive contains videotaped interviews with over 300 elder Tibetan refugees who belong to the last generation born in Tibet before its annexation by the People's Republic of China in the 1950s.

Virtual Preservation of "Pan American Unity"

Explore Diego Rivera's massive (22ft x 74ft) 1940 mural through scientific 3D documentation.

An introduction to our work

As part of the Preservation Unit, Conservation Services is responsible for the physical care of Stanford Libraries' collections.

illuminating the future of discovery and delivery for archives

Resources from an grant project funded by the Institute of Museum and Library Services

Indigenous Mapping

The Barry Lawrence Ruderman Conference on Cartography occurs every other year, and began in 2017. The conference speakers curate a physical exhibit on view at the Center. This website is a digital companion to that exhibit.

Movements for Change

Movements for Change contains iconic images of the movements for civil rights and social justice by Watsonville, California photographer Bob Fitch, spanning the period 1965-present, and includes images of Martin Luther King, Jr., Cesar Chavez, and Dorothy Day, among others.

Know Their Names - Youth Uprising in Cape Town, South Africa, 1976

An installation piece by Gavin Younge, South African artist and teacher. Younge created this artwork as a powerful sequel to the widespread images of the killings in Soweto of students and adults in June 1976.

Statesman, Social Reformer, Public Advocate

Overview of the life and career of John W. Gardner, highlighting his papers and oral histories on his legacies.

‘Where Is My Story?’ Asked by victimized-survivors of political conflict and mass violence, this question reverberates across South Asia. This Archive is witness to systemic disfigurements, displacements and possibilities of the post/colonial condition in South Asia in the latter half of the 20th century and 21st century. It is a gathering place of counter-memory, a digital and physical repository of materials relating to political conflict, social and gendered violence, human rights crimes and people's resistance.

Photographs, audiovisual materials, posters, and ephemera documenting activism at Stanford.

The World of a Renaissance Reader

Spearheaded by history professor Paula Findlen, the exhibition draws on Stanford’s Special Collections and the collections of the David Rumsey Map Center and the Lane Medical Library to reveal the authors and texts that shaped Leonardo’s world and influenced his ideas, reading habits, and understanding of books in the age of Gutenberg.

A Guide for Finding, Analyzing, and Using Maps in Projects

This website provides map-related resources for National History Day participants.

Maps of Tokyo spanning the early nineteenth and twentieth centuries

This exhibit features cartographic representation of Tokyo from 1832 to 1946, showing over a century of changes and including historical maps georeferenced onto current geographic data.

A Digital Coin Cabinet

The numismatics program at Stanford Libraries supports teaching on campus. The current focus is on the largest of our collections, the Cantor Arts Center collection of ancient coins, which contains 328 cataloged items.

Travel-related ephemera from the 17th through the early 20th century.

The study of travel is often associated with maps. And yet, many of the most precious Japanese maps were never used by travelers. This collection of prints represents materials collected by travelers or produced for travelers. It spans a period of time in which there was dramatic change in modes of travel, printing, and viewing geographic space.

An exhibition that examines the 19th-century roots of information graphics.

A catalog of his works

James E. Allen had a 40 year career as an printmaker and illustrator, and was one of the first artists in the early 20th century whose commercial works crossed over to fine arts. This catalog includes information about known works from all aspects of his career.

A Personal Archive

Shahrokh Meskoob was one of Iran’s most acclaimed essayists, memoirists, literary critics and public intellectuals. His collected letters, notes, drafts and outlines provide a rare look into his personal and intellectual life.

The Art and Design of Expression in Historic Maps

An exhibit highlighting the symbologies, and other design elements, found within historic maps.

Hosted by the Stanford Department of Economics

Featuring papers from the Stanford Institute for Theoretical Economics (SITE) annual conference from 1993 to present.

by Esther Burgos-Bordonau, Ph.D.

The Casado García-Sampedro Piano Roll Collection is a group of 54 standard piano rolls from Spain. It is representative of a private roll collection that might be found in the home of a Spanish family in the 1920s and 1930s containing Spanish, Latin American, and other popular music of the time.

Detailed city plans created or published by the Army Map Service during World War II.

This collection focuses on mining maps throughout the western United States with an emphasis on detailed claims, locations, and bird's eye views. These materials highlight issues such as land use, resource extraction, settlement patterns, and the opening of the West.

California and the West

Special Collections holds a significant set of materials by or relating to Carleton Watkins, noted 19th century Western photographer. Especially noteworthy are three albums of mammoth albumen prints, Photographs of the Pacific Coast, Photographs of the Yosemite Valley, and Photographs of Columbia River and Oregon. These items can guide us towards an understanding of the aspirations of Watkins, his peers and supporters, and his era. Originally owned by Mary "Mollie" Latham, wife of California Governor and Senator Milton Slocum Latham, the albums came into the possession of Timothy Hopkins, an early trustee of Stanford University, who in turn gave them to the University.

The Stanford Photograph Collection contains over 16,000 images of Stanford scenes including photographs of and relating to the Stanford family, views of the campus and individual buildings, photographs of students and student life activities, and photographs of faculty and administrative staff. The majority of photographs are black and white gelatin prints but nineteenth-century albumen prints mounted on boards are also represented. The collection spans the late 1890s through the 1990s.

100 years of field mapping

From the very start of Stanford University, geology students were sent into the field to learn mapping. John Casper Branner and John Flesher Newsom taught field mapping to budding geologists first on the campus and then in the Santa Cruz mountains. In 1903, an official course was inaugurated called, "Field Geology," taught by geology and mining professors Dr. Branner and Dr. Newsom. Summer field trips took place every year until 1987.

Oakland and San Francisco transit history in photographs

Local history as seen in selected photographs from the 1870s through the mid-1930s, taken or collected by William Gardiner, a Key System employee and early rail fan. Includes rare images of street cars, workers, bridges, the 1906 earthquake, construction, roadwork, and a variety of street scenes.