Books
There are more than 40,000 books and periodicals in the Center for Southwest Research, many of them rare or out of print. The CSWR collection is only one part of the more than two million books in the University of New Mexico libraries. The rare books collection is built around the Thomas Bell Collection and includes pre-1850 publications, limited editions, and unique format items. The collection is named for Thomas Bell, UNM's first Rhodes Scholarship recipient (1905) who donated his library to UNM. Strengths of the collection include Mexican colonial history, codices, archaeology, Guadalupana, Oaxaca and Maximiliana. Other areas represented are imprints by Jose Toribío Medina and Brazilian small presses, Latin American travel narratives, and works by Henry James and D. H. Lawrence.
The New Mexicana and Southwest Collections consists of books, pamphlets, periodicals, microforms, cookbooks, tape recordings and videos emphasizing New Mexico, Texas, Arizona, Colorado, Utah and Oklahoma. The books given to the CSWR by the late U.S. Senator Clinton Presba Anderson form the core of the Western American Collection. The primary languages represented are Spanish and English, however, Native American language materials are also collected.
The Anderson Room Collection consists of reference books and other general resources on the Southwest and on the University itself, including genealogies, general New Mexico history, Albuquerque business directories from the late 1890s, UNM yearbooks and UNM annual reports. With the exception of these books, all other CSWR materials are housed in closed stacks.
Other materials that require special handling are also housed in the CSWR even though they may not be related to New Mexico, the Southwest, or Latin America. Additional sources related to the CSWR areas of collection may also be found elsewhere in the University Libraries. For example, an extensive array of maps emphasizing New Mexico, the Southwest, Mexico, and Central and South America is available at the Map and Geographic Information Center in the Centennial Science and Engineering Library. Overall, the University Libraries' collection of specialized Mexican, Mesoamerican and Latin American original source materials is ranked among the top 10 in the United States.