Featured videos from the Special Collection & University Archives at the University of Oregon. 

Special Collections and University Archives grew from the work of the History Department, which began collecting materials about Oregon history shortly after the University was founded in 1876. The Oregon Collection was developed for the 1915 Panama-Pacific Exposition and formed the nucleus of the Rare Book collections augmented in the 1930s by the Burgess manuscripts. Special Collections was formally created in 1947 as a library department under curator Martin Schmitt, who worked with Ed Kemp to acquire manuscript, book, and photograph collections. Kenneth Duckett wrote an award-winning guide to the UO collections that was a major contribution to the profession. The Library was named the official repository for University records in 1948. Archives rejoined Special Collections in 1998; University Records was separated from Archives and Special Collections in 2007.