Collections
The University of New Mexico University Libraries holds one of the leading public university research collections on Ibero-America in the United States. The collection of more than 400,000 volumes includes books, periodicals, CD-ROMs, maps, manuscripts, and archival holdings as well as photographs, broadsheets, posters, and other visual resources. Local holdings are complemented by a continually expanding range of electronically accessible material. These resources, on-site and remote, serve more than 150 faculty affiliated with the University's Latin American & Iberian Institute; a student population of more than 24,000; and visiting scholars and researchers from throughout the United States and abroad. The Latin American Studies program currently includes 37 degree and dual-degree options focused on Latin American and enrolls some 450 graduate students annually.In addition, the UNM Library is a member of two national collection development and resource-sharing programs, the Latin American Microform Project (LAMP), which operates under the umbrella of the Center for Research Libraries, and the ARL/AAU Latin Americanist Research Resources Pilot Project. These two programs, with their provisions for expedited interlibrary loan and document delivery, add substantially to the common pool of of primary and secondary material available for research on Latin American topics.
Use of Local Collections
The collections are available to students, faculty, and staff of the University of New Mexico and to outside researchers. Many materials require special handling and must be used in authorized areas. Finding aids, bibliographies, and in-house indices are available for a number of specialized Ibero-American holdings. For information concerning hours, service policies, and specialized reference and research assistance, please contact:
Mina Jane Grothey, 505-277-6295 mgrothey@unm.edu
Carolyn Mountain, 505-277-0818, carolynm@unm.edu
Interim Co-Curators of Latin American and Iberian CollectionsSpecialized Latin American and Iberian Holdings in the University Libraries
The Library's resources include a number of rare and unusual Ibero-American materials that offer special opportunities for study and research.
Two private libraries acquired by the University in the late 1930s, the Paul Van de Velde and the Thomas B. Catron collections, formed the core of the library's holdings of rare and specialized Ibero-Americana. The Van de Velde collection is particularly rich in Mexican history and anthropology, and the Catron collection in Iberian and Mexican political and religious history. Together, the two libraries added more than 9,000 volumes from Mexico, Spain, and Portugal to the Library's special collections. Continued acquisitions, grants from programs within the Federal Government and from the Rockefeller, Ford, and Burlington Northern Foundations as well as libraries donated by individuals have permitted the expansion of the collections and the development of new areas of strength.
Significant Collections of Ibero-American Materials in the University Libraries
Sam L. Slick Collection of Latin American & Iberian Posters: Developments
The Collection has been augmented by the addition of more than 125 posters from Puerto Rico, approximately half of which are silkscreens and include prints done over the last several decades by Rafael Tufiño, Lorenzo Homar, Juan Rosa Castellanos, Eduardo Vera, and Antonio Martorell, as well as posters done by Martorell’s students in his Taller Alacrán. The Collection has also added 35 scarce posters from Chile and Peru, focusing on the themes of land reform and campesino mobilization during the Allende and Velasco Alvarado administrations, respectively. The majority of the Peruvian posters were done in flamboyant pop-art style by Jesús Ruiz Durand.
The Library is advancing its plans for a major exhibition of Latin American political and cultural posters, in collaboration with the National Hispanic Cultural Center. The majority of images to be exhibited will come from the Slick Collection. Scheduled to open in Fall 2006 at the NHCC, the exhibition will be accompanied by an international symposium, a website, a series of public events, and a bilingual catalog with essays contributed by curators and art historians from Latin America and the U.S. It will also travel to other sites.
- José Toribio Medina Collection
First editions of books written or edited by Medina, including many of the rarest imprints produced on the Ercilla and Elzeviriana presses. The collection also includes scarce bio-bibliographical studies of Medina. ca. 150 vols.
- T. Lynn Smith Rural Sociology Archive
Printed items and manuscript material collected by Smith during a lifetime of studying the sociology of rural life. The holdings concentrate on the years 1920 to 1970 and have a strong Latin American focus. 8,000+ pamphlets & 40 linear feet. A web-searchable database of the pamphlets is currently under development.
- Latin American Travel Narratives
Contemporaneously published accounts of American, British, and Continental travelers to Latin America from colonial times to 1900. Holdings are strongest for Brazil and Mexico. Several hundred vols.
- Mexican Bookplate Collection
Individual and institutional bookplates as well as booksellers' and bookbinders' adhesives, dating from the late eighteenth to the early twentieth century. 170 Mexican & 4 French bookplates.
- Mexican Popular Graphic Material
Large and varied collection of prints, broadside and illustrated books, magazines, newspapers, and penny press publications from the mid-nineteenth century through the 1970s. Of particular note are works by José Guadalupe Posada (400+ items, including many original broadsides, chapbook covers, bullfighter portrait series, and leaflets), a substantial archive documenting the work of the preeminent Mexican printmaking cooperative, the Taller de Gráfica Popular (portfolios and individual posters, prints, and ephemera produced by TGP artists Leopoldo Méndez, Alfredo Beltrán, Arturo García Bustos, Pablo O'Higgins, Alfredo Zalce, Angel Bracho, Mariana Yampolski, Elizabeth Catlett, et al.; as well as newspapers, magazines, and literary and political texts illustrated by TGP artists), and Mexican political, satirical, and scientific magazines and periodicals from the early Porfirian period to the Revolution (including a large body of work by Constantino Escalante).
- Oaxacan Research Collection
Rare and scarce Oaxacan newspapers and magazines (1840s to 1930s), Indian grammars and dictionaries, historical treatises, pamphlets, political and religious broadsides and manuscripts, laws and decrees, and unpublished works by Antonio Peñafiel, Manuel Martínez Gracida, and others. Collectively, the material offers a rich and unified portrait of Oaxacan life from pre-Columbian times through the early twentieth century. 1,000+ vols.
- Maximilian-French intervention Material
Printed works from 1861-1867 by Mexican, North American, French, Austrian, and German authors; complemented by manuscripts, political ephemera, photographs, and newspapers. ca. 500 vols.
- Mexican and Luso-Brazilian Almanacs & Calendarios
Almanacs and yearbooks from the nineteenth and early twentieth century covering agriculture, religion, politics, and commerce. The collection includes nearly 100 years of the Almanach de Lembranças Luso-Brasileiras. All major Mexican printers of this material are represented. Several hundred vols.
- France V. Scholes Papers
Scholes' correspondence with distinguished Latin American historians and anthropologists, his personal notebooks, and copies of documents from the AGI and AGN, covering major figures and topics in the ethnohistory of early colonial Mexico. ca. 50 boxes.
- New Mexico Archives and Spanish Colonial Documents
Primary source material in microform or photoprint copy from various Spanish and Mexican archives dealing with topics in the civil and ecclesiastical administration of the Viceroyalties of Peru and New Spain from the immediate post-conquest period to Independence. ca. 300 microfilm reels & 600 bound vols. of documents.
- Columbian Quincentenary Archive
A comprehensive world-wide collection of primary and secondary materials, in all formats, documenting the 1992 Quincentenary on popular and scholarly levels. ca. 85 linear feet.
- Brazilian Small Press Collection
Monographs and periodicals published by avant-garde and small presses throughout Brazil since the 1940s. The collection documents vital elements of Brazilian literary and cultural life and includes fiction, short stories, plays, poetry, crônicas, and literatura de cordel. ca. 3,500 cordel & 4,000 small press vols.
- Latin American Photographic Materials
The Library has significant holdings of Latin American photography (c. 1860 to c. 1970) of interest to researchers in many disciplines. Locales include Mexico, Central, and South America. Subjects include archaeology, ethnology, architecture, art, politics, popular culture, landscapes, economic activities, and scenes of everyday life. A variety of photographic formats are represented: cartes-de-visite, albumen prints, postcards, slides, glass negatives, and modern prints -- some of exhibition quality. Of special interest are cartes-de-visite portraits of Maximilian and his circle and tipos populares (street vendors) by the Cruces y Campa Studio, Mayan monuments taken by Alfred P. Maudslay and Teobert Maler, railroad photographs by William Henry Jackson, Vistas mexicanas series by E. Briquet, political and military leaders of the Revolution of 1910 and scenes of the Revolutionary scenes taken by L.R. Pimentel, Hugo Brehme landscapes of Popocatepetl in eruption, C.B. Waite's tropical plantation views, 19th- and 20th-century mining photographs, Marc Ferrez's Albumen prints of Rio de Janeiro, early (1860s) views of Corrientes (Argentina), and 20th-century study of Andean Indians by George Bunzl. Many new acquisitions have been added to this continually growing collection. (For information concerning the use and copying of photographic materials, contact Mike Kelley, Acting Curator of Pictorial Collections, Center for Southwest Research, University Libraries, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM 8713, mtk@unm.edu)
Archivo ARMAS (Archivo de Revistas Militares Americanas y de Seguridad)
The Archivo ARMAS is not a physically integrated collection as such, nor is it, properly speaking, an archive. Rather, it refers to a major collection of journals published by the armed forces in all of the South American countries, augmented by periodicals issued by national police forces and by strategic studies institutes. The chronological coverage varies from country to country, spanning in some cases the entire twentieth century and more, in other cases, one or two decades only. In terms of both number and range of titles and breadth of years covered, the collection is strongest for Argentina, Brazil, Chile,Bolivia, and Colombia. A complete listing of titles in the collection (including call number and physical location within the University Libraries) will be found by clicking on the word "journals" high-lighted above. Principal topics covered include national security, armaments, civil-military relations, military recruitment, military history, and geopolitical strategy. Issues are held in either microfilm, or original hard-copy, or xerox. The name "Archivo Armas" was given to the collection during the initial acquisitions phase (1994-95), when--by means of a grant from the DOE’s short-lived Foreign Periodicals Program--the University of New Mexico set out to form a comprehensive collection of Latin American military periodicals (focusing on the period 1945-1995) and thereby fill a void in the holdings of North American research libraries. Although major acquisitions work ended with the termination of the grant, the Library maintains subscriptions to approximately a dozen titles. Additional backfiles are also added as opportunities arise for either purchases or donations.
The University of New Mexico
Comments to wpeder@unm.edu
Revised: 10 January, 2006