When patrons want to view noncirculating materials from ASU Library’s Distinctive Collections and Archives they make an appointment to come to the Wurzburger Reading Room at Hayden Library.
One of the fun things about working in the reading room is learning about the variety of projects on which patrons come to research. The reading room can accommodate several researchers at the same time. On any day we might have scheduled an ASU undergraduate English major viewing a 16th century Chaucer volume from our Rare Books and Manuscripts Collection as well as a visiting scholar using the Barry Goldwater Papers (Greater Arizona Collection) to do research with primary sources for the book they’re writing on the Vietnam War. A local Phoenix resident who studies the history of community organizing in Arizona might come in to view the Chicanos Por La Causa Collection (Chicano/a Collection).
We have the personal papers of iconoclastic authors such as William Burroughs and showbiz legends such as Peter Lawford and Steve Allen (Rare Books and Manuscripts). You can research the history of labor organizing in the southwest with various Greater Arizona collections or the history of LGBT nightlife and activism in Phoenix with the BJ Bud Collection (Greater AZ, Community Driven Archives). We’ve got architecture collections which patrons can use to study the masterpieces of desert modernism (Design Special Collections) and an internationally renowned repository for youth-theater that is the largest in the world (Child Drama).
But what’s great about our reading room and libraries in general is that, with few exceptions, we don’t have criteria that patrons must meet in order to view our materials. We’re here for everyone. Maybe you’ve heard that we have an expansive “Star Wars” collection of publicity and merchandizing materials (Nicholas A. Salerno Star Wars Collection) and don’t even go to ASU. Or maybe you’re curious about small press books from Brazil or the papers of ASU biologist and scorpion venom expert Herbert L. Stankhe. We’ve hosted researchers viewing Theraveda Buddhist religious texts written on palm leaves dating to the 1600s (Guardian of the Flame Sri Lanka Manuscript Collection) to teenaged “Hamilton” fans who visited the reading room and saw an original copy of the Federalist Papers. Whether you’re on a deadline driven project and need to spend a week in the reading room going through dozens of different manuscript collections or just curious about something you found in the library catalog, we want the reading room to be a portal to discovery and inspiration for everyone.
Learn more about our collections on the Distinctive Collections webpage and contact us about scheduling a reading room appointment via the Ask an Archivist submission form. And don’t forget to follow us on Instagram!
--Matt Messbarger, Operations Supervisor, Distinctive Collections