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Glenn Davis photographed a sailboat on Lake Mead near the crest of Boulder Dam from the upstream Nevada side. The dam was officially renamed Hoover Dam in 1947. (PH: 0020-0126)
UNLV history graduate student Maryse Lundering-Timpano worked as a summer intern in Special Collections this past June and July creating finding aids for our many historic photograph collections. Here she describes a collection of particular interest to her.
Here Davis photographed the main construction site of the Boulder Dam project from the downstream side. (PH: 0020-0072)
Hoover Dam was the first federal government project in…Read More
Photograph of the I-15 corridor, March 23, 2016. Aaron Mayes, UNLV Libraries Special Collections.
Special Collections launched the Building Las Vegas collecting initiative in July 2016. With start-up funding from the Tiberti Family, the project initially focuses on collecting oral histories with architects, urban planners, builders, developers, contractors, interior designers,…Read More
The widespread use of computers and the internet made an indelible mark on the world of gaming, as it did on numerous other aspects of our lives. The Eugene Martin Christiansen Papers held in UNLV Libraries Special Collections document how gaming companies, gamblers, race tracks, and casinos began looking into the forerunners of internet gaming as early as the 1970s and had been using networked computers as a resource decades before most people were online.
The Eugene Martin Christiansen Papers (MS-00561) contain research files, reports, and presentations about gambling written by social scientist and consultant Eugene Martin Christiansen and his colleagues from approximately 1976 to 2008. The collection includes reports about legal and illegal gaming, including subjects such as economic impacts of legalized gaming, popularity of off-track betting, horse and dog racing, table games, gambling addiction, gaming…Read More
Michael Don Fraser, Book and Paper Conservator, Special Collections Division
In our Secrets from Special Collections series, UNLV Libraries Special Collections staff members divulge what they consider to be the hidden gems of the library, sharing answers, based on their own experiences, to six intriguing questions. Here, Book and Paper Conservator Michael Don Fraser gives us a glimpse into life working among the rare treasures of the library.
1. When you first began working in Special Collections, what was the one item or collection that made your jaw drop, and why? Describe.…Read More
Tales from the Pit, a new publication edited by David G. Schwartz, Director of the Center for Gaming Research, inside UNLV Libraries Special Collections (Cover photo by Aaron Mayes, UNLV Special Collections Curator of Visual Materials)
UNLV Libraries Special Collections houses a vast collection of recorded, transcribed and/or digitized oral histories—first-person narratives told by Las Vegas pioneers and residents, some covering events that happened 100 years or more in the past. They are, in a way, self-portraits of people from many professions, cultures and lifestyles who have shared in Las Vegas’…Read More
A new exhibit in Lied Library curated by social sciences librarian Heidi Johnson features a number of original documents, photographs, yearbooks, and copies of the UNLV student newspaper Rebel Yell drawn from the University Archives in Special Collections. The original documents were essential to chronicling the history of student activism at UNLV over six decades.
“Documents from the University Archives offer examples of students working with administrators to change curricula and programming to meet the needs of a diverse student body,” said Michelle Light,…Read More
As one of the oldest of architectural theories, the ‘primitive hut’ has influenced generations of architects. A primitive hut occurs when vertical tree trunks planted in the ground support a horizontal beam that bears a sloped roof to shed rainwater. In 1753 the French theorist Marc-Antoine (Abbe) Laugier argued that the Primitive Hut testifies of architecture’s natural origins and that it, the primitive hut, is the prototype of all built form.
Laugier Primitive Hut
Marc-Antoine (Abbe) Laugier called attention to architecture’s natural beginnings with this image.
Image credit: Wikimedia, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Essai_sur_l%27Architecture_-_Frontispiece.jpg
In 1851 Gottfried Semper expanded the primitive…Read More
A young boy posed in a wide stance gazes into the distance. His arms hold a cape outstretched at his sides. The young boy’s name is Georgie and he is an Ojibwe of the Mille Lacs Band in Minnesota. Georgie is one of the many characters depicted in comic books produced by the Mille Lacs Band to educate their children, and also the non-Native American public, on Ojibwe culture. In the comic A Hero’s Voice, Georgie’s grandfather teaches him the importance of recognizing the real heroes in his life, his ancestors, not imagined comic book heroes. Georgie’s grandfather guides him through hundreds of years of Ojibwe history, highlighting how his ancestors fought to protect their rights and land from Anglo interlopers. At the end of the story Georgie is told that he too can be a hero, by protecting the…Read More
Cory Lampert, Head, Digital Collections, Special Collections Division
In our Secrets from Special Collections series, UNLV Libraries Special Collections staff members divulge what they consider to be the hidden gems of the library, sharing answers, based on their own experiences, to six intriguing questions. Here, Cory Lampert, Head of Digital Collections gives us a glimpse into life working among the rare treasures of the library.
When you first began working in Special Collections, what was the one item or collection that made your jaw drop, and why? Describe.…Read More
Down on the first-floor processing area of UNLV’s Lied Library, our local National Historical Publications and Records Commission grant project team is busy at work organizing, rehousing, and describing three of the largest gaming collections in Special Collections. The project team includes two graduates of UNLV’s History Department masters’ program, Lindsay Oden and Hannah Robinson, who are employed as full-time project archivists, as well as a graduate student assistant from the History Department, Lee Hanover, and an undergraduate student assistant, Hana Gutierrez.
While we often refer to our work unofficially as the “NHPRC project,” the official project title is "America’s Great Gamble: A Project to Promote the Discovery of Sources About the…Read More
