The Private Press book collection includes items from more than 1,000 presses in Canada, Great Britain, and the United States. This collection has been developed as a representative collection, with intensive coverage of selected presses, such as Hague & Gill, St. Dominic's Press, Nonesuch Press, and Golden Cockerel Press, to provide scope for in-depth study of the history and development of these particular presses. A sample selection from a wide range of other private presses gives an overview of the private press movement in the twentieth century.

The Sol Eisen Collection of Canadiana is a collection of 179 rare, and in some cases, previously unrecorded, books, pamphlets, and printed ephemera from Quebec, Ontario, and Western Canada. The collection was presented to the University of Waterloo Library by Morton Eisen of Toronto in 1993. Sol Eisen (1898-1974), a Toronto lawyer, first began his "collecting hobby" with baseball cards in 1911. The focus of his collection eventually turned to rare books, and the variety and quality of the material he acquired are testimony to the diligence and enthusiasm with which he pursued his hobby.

Highlights of the Sol Eisen Collection of Canadiana include its earliest imprint, Nehiro-Iriniui Aiamihe Massinahigan (1767), a book of prayers and catechism for the Montagnais Indians by the Jesuit missionary, Jean Baptiste de La Brosse. This is one of the few books ever to be printed in the Montagnais dialect. Also important among the early imprints is, Traite de la loi des fiefs (1775), a compilation of four publications by Francois Cugnet which sets forth the basic principles of the civil law of the French Regime (still in force in the Province of Quebec).

Several imprints are of great rarity. Included in this category are a children's book printed in Brockville in 1826 entitled, First Book for Children; an 1839 edition of Wilson's Border Tales; and two previously unknown almanacs, The Upper Canada Almanac and Provincial Calendar for the Year of Our Lord 1831, and The Toronto Farmers' and Mechanicks' Almanack for the Year of Our Lord 1838. Other items not noted in the standard bibliographies include an 1879 broadside printed in Winnipeg entitled, A Grand Display of Manitoba Products ... Selected for the Ottawa Exhibition. Only one other copy is known to exist of Swift's York County Almanac for the Year 1832, which is also of interest by virtue of its printer, William Lyon MacKenzie.

Other notable items include two books printed in the Cree language at Moose Factory, one in 1896, and the other in 1859.

Artists’ books (defined as: books or book-like objects over the final appearance of which an artist has had a high degree of control; where the book is intended as a work of art in itself) can be located using the library catalogue. Authors include Palmer & Calvert, William Morris, and David Jones.

The bpNichol Library of Science Fiction, acquired in 1990, consists of more than 500 science fiction titles from the private library of the late Canadian writer, Barrie Phillip Nichol (commonly referred to as bpNichol).

Many well-known science fiction authors' first works were issued only in paperback, and this collection includes many key titles in the science fiction genre which are extremely scarce today as a result of the vulnerability of the paperback format to deterioration. The books in this collection feature many striking examples of cover art.

Many of the holdings of Special Collections & Archives represent fine bindings, unique bindings and the works of famous printers and binders. Examples include signed bindings, metal, velvet and papier-mache bindings, and bindings by well-known bookbinders such as Joseph Zaehnsdorf, and Sangorski & Sutcliffe.

The Doris Lewis Rare Book Room houses a sizeable special collection of rare materials related to the history of dance and ballet. The nucleus of the dance collection is the 150 items donated in 1975 by Dr. Henry Crapo, a former University of Waterloo faculty member. Dr. Crapo has continued to support the collection over the years.

Dr. Crapo's donation contains some rare and beautiful works on ballet: works by Negri, Caroso, Noverre, De la Cuisse, Arena, Dumanoir, Blasis and Bakst. The subject strengths of the collection reflect Dr. Crapo's interests in choreography and dance notation.

Of the seventeenth-century materials found here, some of the finest are Negri's Nuove inventioni de balli (Milan: 1604); Caroso's Nobilita di Dame (Venice: 1605), and Du Manoir's Le mariage de la musique avec la dance (1664).

The largest addition to the dance collection was the 300-volume collection acquired with the assistance of a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council grant in 1982. This collection, with imprints ranging in date from 1687 to the mid-twentieth century, adds a new research dimension in the form of illustrated works containing lithographs and engravings of the period of the Romantic ballet. The provenance of the majority of works in this collection--a portion of the personal library of George Chaffee--a leading dance writer of the twentieth century, accounts in part for its strength. Many of the books Chaffee consulted in his research for his most famous writings on ballet are now a part of the Waterloo collections.

In 1985, another grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council made it possible for the Library to purchase over two dozen books supportive of the Crapo Collection.

Special Collections & Archives has prepared a digital exhibit featuring some of the items from the Henry H. Crapo Dance Collection.

This collection is made up of 25 first or early editions of the 35 titles by Virginia Woolf as well as 62 titles printed by the Hogarth Press. 47 of the Hogarth Press items date from the 1917-1938 period during which Virginia Woolf was associated with the Press.

Highlights of the collection include a first edition of Virginia Woolf's A Room of One's Own, and its sequel, Three Guineas, and first editions of her last two novels.

This is a representative collection that contains one example from each of most of the different series (for example, the Day to Day series, Hogarth Letters, Hogarth Essays), and examples of very early printings of some 20th century writers, such as Robert Graves, Edith Sitwell, and Gertrude Stein.

The collection consists of 169 paperback books featuring Lesbian themes.

During the post-war period, from the late 1940's to the 1960's, a significant amount of Lesbian material became available amidst the proliferation of popular fiction published as paperback originals (sometimes referred to as "pulp" fiction). Some authors represented in this collection are: Ann Bannon, Paula Christian, Valerie Taylor, Artemis Smith, Randy Salem, March Hastings, Gale Wilhelm, Marion Zimmer Bradley (writing under the names Lee Chapman and Miriam Gardner), and Marijane Meaker (writing under the names Ann Aldrich and Vin Packer).

The William Blake Collection consists of more than 200 titles of which the majority are facsimiles of Blake's works or privately-printed reprints and editions containing facsimiles of the illustrations. The collection also forms part of a larger collection devoted to joint painter-illustrator-author books that include followers of Blake, e.g. Palmer & Calvert, William Morris, Eric Gill, and David Jones.

One of the highlights of the William Blake Collection is the 1951 Trianon Press edition of William Blake's Jerusalem.

A collection of seven zines created by Jenna Rose Sands on topics including cultural appropriation, residential schools, missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls, Pow Wow etiquette and the 60s scoop. Much of the artwork is hand-drawn and includes collage work.

A collection of 23 prospectus, mail order catalogues, and subscription requests for erotic books. The prospectus are couched in the terms of literature, anthropology and sexology in attempts to disguise the erotic nature of the works.

The nucleus of this collection, begun by the University of Waterloo's first dean of Graduate Studies, Dr. R. Stanton and the University's first librarian, Mrs. Doris Lewis, during the 1960's, is 45 editions of Euclid's Elements of Geometry. The collection has continued to be developed as a special collection. A collection of 110 nineteenth century mathematics books was acquired in 1981.

The earliest edition of Euclid's Elements of Geometry is dated 1505 (D0128). Another early Latin edition (D1029) is dated 1510. This unique work is also bound in a palimpsest parchment, which shows traces of effaced Hebrew text. This particular edition is also a so-called "ghost edition" where for many years bibliographies listed it as having been printed in the year 1515, a mistake in reading the date in the colophon.

The collection includes the first translation of the Elements into a modern language (1543, D0126), and the first edition printed in France (1516, D0272).

The first English language edition (1570, D0127) is an important edition that features pop-up figures of polyhedrons to help learners visualize Euclidean shapes. It is also includes the most comprehensive notes on Euclid to that point, also written by translator Henry Billingsley. The preface is also of note, as it was written by John Dee, alchemist and more to Queen Elizabeth I. The printer was John Daye, one of the preeminent printers of Post-Reformation England. At some point in the lived history of the book conservation work was done and binder's waste in the form of 14th century mss were discovered.

One of the most famous forays into pedagogical experimentation is the Byrne edition, using coloured printing (1847, G1947). Created by mathematician Oliver Byrne, it covers the first 6 books of Euclid's Elements of Geometry, and attempts to present Euclid's proofs in terms of pictures using only primary colours. It was published by William Pickering and printed by Chiswick Press. Although it was, and still is, considered an important item in the history of printing, it unfortunately directly contributed to the bankruptcy of the firm six years later.

The collection includes 9 of the 46 editions listed by Thomas-Stanford in his Early Editions of Euclid's Elements (which lists editions published prior to 1600), some of which are of "great rarity" according to Thomas-Stanford. The collection is particularly useful in showing the transmission and teaching of the Elements from almost the earliest printed form to modern texts.

Materials relating to the creation and operation of Dumont Press Graphix Limited.

A collection of 15 issues of the first hacker newsletter, the Youth International Party's (Yippies) phone hacking ("phreaking") newsletter, the Youth International Party Line (later renamed Technological American Party, or TAP). Also includes a hand written sheet on number 5 signalling systems.

Collection consists of published holdings held by Special Collections & Archives related to Indigenous peoples in Canada and abroad with a primary focus on First Nations, Inuit, Métis communities. The collection consist of of books, periodicals, zines, and other published materials, produced by, about, and in the language(s) of various Indigenous peoples and communities.

Titles in this collection are varied in topic and will be of interest to those interested in grassroots activism, self-determination governance, land rights and stewardship, community building, and settler and religious colonialism.

Ephemeral materials created and accumulated by various private presses including Dolmen Press, Rampant Lions Press, Poetry Bookshop, Press Porcepic, Soft Press, Stanbrook Abbey Press.