Archives & Special Collections is your portal to the University's archives, rare books, manuscripts, historic photos, artifacts, and much more.
Research Support
We have scanned nearly 50,000 images and documents from our collections for you to access online. Search across all collections, or target your search to some of the popular collections listed below.
- The Santa Clara Student Newspaper
- SCU Yearbooks
- SCU Course Catalogs
- Mission Santa Clara Manuscripts
- Mission Santa Clara Sacramental Records
- Full text scans of baptism, marriage, and burial records. Click Browse All at top of page to replicate the experience of leafing through the bound records by hand.
- Unsure where to begin? This guide to SCU Digital Collections can help you get you started.
Archives & Special Collections is open to researchers Monday through Thursday from 10:00 am to 5:00 pm, and Fridays from 10 am to 3:00 pm during the academic term for 2023/24. Finals weeks and intercessions have reduced hours; please check the department calendar. Appointments outside these hours may be accommodated depending on staff availability.
For best results when consulting rare books and archival collections, please call or email us no later than two business days before your anticipated date of arrival to set up an appointment and arrange for materials to be brought to the reading room.
As always, virtual assistance is available: we provide Zoom appointments, material duplication, and email research consultations.
How to reach us: call (408) 554-5530 or email SpecialCollections@scu.edu with your inquiry.
Arthur's Attic is the blog of Archives & Special Collections, where we share interesting items and discuss topics related to our collections. The blog is named after Arthur Spearman, University Archivist from 1957-1977, who we attribute to assembling many of our bedrock collections.