|
World Wars and Between
|
- Special Collections & Archives preserves collections related to the First and Second World Wars as well as the interwar and post-war periods. Several collections feature the diaries, photographs, memorabilia, military decorations, correspondence, and scrapbooks of servicemen including Frederick Arthur Edmonds, W.E. Short, John Gartshore Martin, Kenneth Germany Rowntree, and Joseph Illig, among others. In addition, the department holds collections related to Cameron Clare Hill and Jerzy-Tadeusz Pindera, both of whom were captured as prisoners of war. Other collections include material documenting the lives and activities of the Keffer family while they lived in Germany during the interwar period, and material related to Gladys Lilian King documenting her work experiences in England during the First World War. The department also holds reports, studies, manuals, and radio broadcast transcripts related to Second World War propaganda research, many of which were written by the British Broadcasting Corporation.
|
42 |
0 |
|
Women's Studies
|
- Special Collections & Archives preserves archival collections, books, and periodicals that support research in women’s, gender, and family studies. Archival collections include papers of individual women and women’s organizations that support the study of women’s history in Canada from the mid-nineteenth century to the late twentieth century. The book and periodical collections have a wide historical and geographical focus, including works on the role and place of women in society from the sixteenth to the twentieth century. In general, the collections fall into the following broad categories: birth control and eugenics, broadcasting and journalism, domestic arts, education, medicine and science, organizations, politics, women’s rights and suffrage, and writers.
- The first of the women’s studies collections were acquired in the mid-1960s due to the combined interests of Doris Lewis, then university librarian, and the National Council of Women of Canada. The National Council had assembled a library on the history of women and donated it to the fledgling University of Waterloo Library as a centennial project in 1967. Council members were, in turn, encouraged to donate their personal papers to Waterloo.
|
131 |
0 |
|
Urban Planning
|
- Special Collections & Archives carries a variety of collections related to urban planning: the development and disposition of land, resources, facilities, and services in cities and towns. Collections include town guides from cities across the United Kingdom, as well as maps and fire insurance plans of the Kitchener-Waterloo area. The department also holds the papers of Herbert Johnson, a city engineer who worked for many local cities and townships, and Bill Thomson, an urban planner who worked extensively in the Waterloo Region and also served as an Adjunct Professor at the University of Waterloo in the School of Urban and Regional Planning. In addition, the department also maintains many records documenting the development of Guildwood Village in Scarborough, Ontario in the Breithaupt Hewetson Clark Collection.
|
6 |
0 |
|
University of Waterloo
|
- Special Collections & Archives houses the private collections of individuals and organizations connected to the University of Waterloo. They include the professional and personal papers of select faculty members or lecturers working in a variety of disciplines such as Anne Innis Dagg, Bernard Suits, Nancy-Lou Patterson, Francis Montgomery, John English, and Isobel McKay. The department also maintains collections related to former presidents of the University of Waterloo including Joseph Gerald Hagey and James Downey, as well as Waterloo’s first Chancellor, Dana Porter. In addition, the department retains the records of some organizations across campus such as the Faculty Association of the University of Waterloo and the Canadian Obesity Network Student and New Professional University of Waterloo chapter. Other collections include negatives from the Imprint, student sound recordings, commissioned artwork of campus, and artefacts from the School of Pharmacy.
|
55 |
0 |
|
Thematic Areas
(16)
|
|
0 |
0 |
|
Spiritualism
|
- Special Collections & Archives carries collections related to Spiritualism. Spiritualism is a religious movement and philosophy rooted in the belief that spirits live on after physical death and that communication with those spirits is possible. Collections related to these areas include the typescript lectures and séance recordings of Thomas Lacey, a local voice and trance medium; the papers of William Cartheuser, an American medium; as well as the archives and books from the Maines Pincock family, which document the family’s interest in and engagement with Spiritualism. Other collections include an example of spirit photography, a manuscript notebook recording the details of séances, scrapbooks about Lily Dale, books about the German mystic Jakob Lorber, and a wide selection of rare books.
|
12 |
0 |
|
Southey and the Romantics
|
- Special Collections & Archives maintains collections related to Robert Southey, an English poet of the Romantic school, and romantic poetry. The Romantic era is an intellectual movement that originated in Europe and was most popular between 1800 and 1890. Records related to romantic poetry are primarily derived from the papers and personal library of amateur historian Bertram R. Davis. Davis’s collection contains over 6000 items of correspondence between leading Romantic scholars, and over 800 monographs including first edition copies of almost all of Southey’s published works. Other related collections feature a holograph poem written and signed by Southey and a handwritten letter with an etching from Southey to William Webb of Dublin.
|
4 |
0 |
|
Sociology
|
|
22 |
0 |
|
Religious Studies
|
|
26 |
0 |
|
Psychology
|
|
1 |
0 |
|
Political Science
|
|
13 |
0 |
|
Physics and Astronomy
|
|
2 |
0 |
|
Philosophy
|
|
2 |
0 |
|
Pharmacy
|
|
5 |
0 |
|
Oral Histories
|
- The University of Waterloo Archives holds oral history collections of interviews conducted with faculty, staff, and students connected to the University of Waterloo. The oral history collections include the 1998 University of Waterloo Retirees Project, interviews conducted by Professor Ken McLaughlin as research for his histories about the University, as well as a series of interviews conducted during the campus early retirement program in 1996. In addition, the department holds the Oral History Hub Pilot collection: a series of nine interviews conducted during 2022. Special Collections & Archives also has oral history interviews in the literary and historical collections and the topics of these mirror our general collecting areas.
|
2 |
0 |
|
Music
|
|
5 |
0 |
|
Medicine
|
|
16 |
0 |
|
Media
|
|
20 |
0 |
|
Mathematics
|
- Special Collections & Archives maintains archival and book collections regarding the history of mathematics, particularly in relation to geometry and computer science. The department holds 45 editions of Euclid’s Elements of Geometry and 110 nineteenth-century mathematic rare books. In addition, the department holds a manuscript by Auguste Bienaime Desire Pioch about calculus, a copy of Lorenzo Mascheroni’s manuscript about geometrical problems, and notebooks containing mathematical problems, solutions, and notes that belonged to Thomas Stowell. Moreover, the department retains the papers of some Waterloo faculty members including Donald Cowan, J. Wesley Graham, Ralph Stanton, and undergraduate student William Kindree.
|
16 |
0 |
|
Local History
|
- Special Collections & Archives holds a variety of resources related to the local and urban history of the Kitchener-Waterloo area. Collections include maps, fire insurance plans, business and city directories, yearbooks from local high schools, government documents outlining local county or village by-laws, and newspapers including restored copies of issues of the Berliner Journal for the years 1859-1889. The department is also home to the Kitchener-Waterloo Photographic Negative Collection, which documents local news events, community activities, regional development, and human-interest stories between 1938-2001. Many of the local history collections contain the institutional archives of local businesses and organizations such as Dare Foods Limited, Electrohome, Fritsch Pharmacy, the Dominion Rubber Company, the Kitchener-Waterloo Record, and the Rotary Club of Kitchener. In addition, the department maintains numerous family papers including those for the Breithaupt, Bolender Ball, Ratz, Schantz, Schneider, and Seagram families, among many others. These collections complement several printed genealogies, family histories, and monographs also held by the department.
|
199 |
0 |
|
Legal studies
|
|
8 |
0 |
|
Kinesiology
|
|
4 |
0 |
|
Indigenous Peoples
|
- Special Collections & Archives preserves archival and published material related to Indigenous Peoples in Ontario and Canada, Australia, and Norway. Collections include correspondence related to a rebellion by the Mohawk nation in the eighteenth century as well as the journals, correspondence, and other records of Colin Rankin and Donald McKay, both of whom worked as fur traders for the Hudson Bay Company. In addition, the department holds five land grants issued by the Department of Indian Affairs bestowing lands formerly promised to the Ojibwe and Odawa of Manitoulin Island. Other collections include the research and publications of E Palmer Patterson, a historian who wrote about the history of Indigenous communities in Canada, and Sally Weaver, an anthropologist whose work focused on gaining justice and recognition for Indigenous Peoples in Canada, Australia, and Norway.
|
9 |
0 |
|
History
|
|
76 |
0 |
|
German
|
|
12 |
0 |
|
Geology
|
|
2 |
0 |
|
Geography
|
|
3 |
0 |
|
Gender, Sexuality, and Social Justice
|
- Special Collections & Archives houses archival and book collections that support the study of the intersection of gender, sexuality and social justice as related to theatre, health, support and advocacy on campus, and literature. Collections include the poems, plays, essays, and other works by John Herbert, a Canadian playwright and theatre director, best-known for his play, Fortune and Men’s Eyes. Moreover, the department holds the papers of Marie Stopes, who founded the first birth control clinic in the world and published books discussing sex and birth control in the early twentieth century. Additional collections include the records of the Glow Centre for Sexual and Gender Diversity at the University of Waterloo and a wide selection of paperback books featuring lesbian themes by authors such as Ann Bannon, Artemis Smith, and Randy Salem. There are also collections relating to colonization and colonial violence, particularly in the context of missionary work.
|
14 |
0 |
|
French Studies
|
|
0 |
0 |
|
Fine Arts
|
|
40 |
0 |
|
Environment
|
- Special Collections & Archives maintains print and archival collections relating to the environment, specifically issues of climate change, water, tourism, biology, zoology, conservation, limnology, and natural resources management in Ontario in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Archival collections include those of individual activists and scholars such as George and Alida Burrett, John D. Detwiler, Noel Hynes, Linda Mortsch, and Anne Innis Dagg. In addition, the department holds archival collections of advocacy and community organizations such as the Canadian Coalition on Acid Rain, Grand River Conservation Authority, Muskoka Lakes Association, and the Walter Bean Community Trails Foundation.
|
30 |
0 |
|
English
|
|
74 |
0 |
|
Engineering
|
|
6 |
0 |
|
Education
|
|
13 |
0 |
|
Drama
|
|
10 |
0 |
|
Dance
|
- Special Collections & Archives maintains, but no longer actively collects, records and rare books related to the history and performance of dance. These collections contain material describing the history of various types of dance including ancient dance and sport (particularly as performed by the Greeks), Scottish dancing, as well as the cotillion, waltz, minuet, and the quadrille. Additionally, the collections feature a significant amount of material related to ballet including choreography, dance notations, lithographs, engravings, over 150 rare books, and records detailing the scheduling and planning of the Vestris Prize for choreography.
- Dance related collections were acquired to support the Department of Dance within the Faculty of Applied Health Sciences, and dance courses that began being offered during the 1969-1970 school year, which predated the department’s founding as an independent program in 1972. The Dance Program was closed in 1996.
|
5 |
0 |
|
Computer Science
|
|
8 |
0 |
|
Classical Studies
|
|
1 |
0 |
|
Business
|
|
29 |
0 |
|
Book Arts
|
- Special Collections & Archives maintains many examples of book art: the field of art devoted to the intrinsic design, form, structure, and conceptual properties of a book. Examples include artists’ books, editions printed by private presses and rare volumes featuring fine binding or printing. The collection of artists’ books includes those by authors Palmer & Calvert, William Morris, and David Jones. In addition, the department holds rare editions and early printings of books produced by private presses like the Poetry Bookshop, Dolmen Press, and Hogarth Press. The department also houses editions of books featuring fine printing by printers such as Eric Gill and fine binding examples from well-known bookbinders such as Joseph Zaehnsdorf and Sangorski & Sutcliffe. Moreover, there are hundreds of pulp fiction books in the Lesbian Literature Collection and the B.P. Nichol Library of Science Fiction that reflect the genre’s graphic and colourful cover art.
|
16 |
0 |
|
Biology
|
|
6 |
0 |
|
Artists and Authors
|
- Special Collections & Archives holds a selection of papers from twentieth-century Canadian artists and authors of poetry, fiction, non-fiction, and drama such as Alice Mary Hagen, David Hill, Elaine M. Catley, Eric P. McCormack, as well as Jane and Tony Urquhart. Combined, the collections document all stages of the creative arts process including handwritten manuscripts, typescripts, computer outputs, drafts, revisions and proofs, sketchbooks, idea books, original illustrations, and artworks. Many of these collections also include photographs, correspondence, diaries, ephemera, and other material that reveal additional insight about the artistic creative process.
|
58 |
0 |
|
Architecture
|
- Special Collections & Archives holds records related to architecture: the design and construction of buildings. Collections include the personal papers and drawings of architects and architectural historians including W.H.E. Schmalz, Arthur Gordon Shoosmith, Ross Dixon, John Ivan Rempel, and William Dendy. In addition, some collections contain records from professional associations such as the Ontario Association of Architects. The department also maintains collections focused on conservation efforts to preserve Ontario’s architectural heritage including the Breithaupt Hewetson Clark Collection and the Architectural Conservancy of Ontario: North Waterloo Region fonds. These collections are supplemented by several additional acquisitions featuring plans and drawings for local buildings and homes, and a selection of rare books on architecture.
|
16 |
0 |
|
Academic disciplines
(26)
|
|
0 |
0 |
