UT Dallas Special Collections

Don’t mind me, I’ll be watching something related to stamps, but you could watch something different.

Did you know you can check out dvds and dvd players? Students, staff, and faculty can check out both for up to 14 days. Search the catalog and reserve a dvd, and then head over to Services to pick up your dvd and check out the player.

Hey Comets! We’re here to back you up and cheer you on!

Take a break and de-stress with us at the library for our Good Luck with Finals event!!

Head over to McDermott Library on May 5th from 4-6 pm, in MC 1.2 Atrium. We’ll have a hot chocolate station, as well as coffee, tea, and study snacks! We’ll also be giving away library swag, and you can join in some relaxing crafts and activities!

Celebrate Preservation Week with us in the McDermott library lobby and find out how we preserve things in the archives. We’ll be here from 1-3 pm!

March Madness is over!! The results are in!!!

With a score of 4-2, the grand champion of our inaugural March Madness event is the….

miniature English Bijou Almanac for 1836!! Edited by poet Letitia Elizabeth Landon, the English Bijou Almanac for 1836 is the smallest book in our Rare Book Collection — roughly the size of a postage stamp. It still manages to fit a calendar, text, and an illustration inside, and it came to us in its original velvet-lined case.

Big things do come in tiny, or miniature, packages!!

Thanks everyone for playing along!! Be on the lookout for more winners from the Special Collections and Archives Division!

It’s the Finals!! The votes are in! The English Bijou Almanac dominated the History of Lace with a score of 5-2, while it was a tight match with Bob Buol’s Knitted American Flag pulling ahead of the SCAS Time Capsule ending in 4-3 at the buzzer.

Now this it’s up to you to decide the Grand Champion!! Vote below!

1A The English Bijou Almanac for 1836 advanced 7-5 Edited by poet Letitia Elizabeth Landon, the English Bijou Almanac for 1836 is the smallest book in our Rare Book Collection — roughly the size of a postage stamp. It still manages to fit a calendar, text, and an illustration inside, and it came to us in its original velvet-lined case.

vs

1B Bob Buol’s Knitted American Flag (1950–1955) Bob Buol was a Civil Air Transport pilot imprisoned in a Chinese Communist prison for five years. He’d learned to knit from the wives of fellow airmen, and inside that prison, he pulled yarn from items on the clothesline and knitted this flag entirely by hand. It survived. He survived. It’s now in our History of Aviation Archives (Sue B. Hacker Papers).

Voting ends 4/7 at midnight.

Next up for our Round 3 in our Special Collections March Madness:

2A: SCAS Time Capsule (1964) Unearthed from the foundation of Founder’s Building in 2019 — just in time for the university’s 50th anniversary — this time capsule was originally buried to commemorate SCAS establishing itself in Richardson. Inside: founding documents, artifacts, and even a small radioactive sample (safely removed). A literal piece of campus history, buried and waiting for over 50 years.

Vs

2B: Bob Buol’s Knitted American Flag (1950–1955) Bob Buol was a Civil Air Transport pilot imprisoned in a Chinese Communist prison for five years. He’d learned to knit from the wives of fellow airmen, and inside that prison, he pulled yarn from items on the clothesline and knitted this flag entirely by hand. It survived. He survived. It’s now in our History of Aviation Archives (Sue B. Hacker Papers).

Vote for your favorite in the comments! If you didn’t vote for yesterday’s contenders, go back and get your vote in now. Voting ends April 6. Can’t wait to see who’s in the finals!!

Tomorrow is International Animation Day! (Wednesday, October 29th!)

We’re celebrating with G. van Laar’s Magazijn van tuin-sieraden (1802), or Garden Design — a book of elaborate landscapes and imaginative layouts from the Louise B. Belsterling Botanical Collection.

To our Animation and Games students: what if you built your next world from an 18th or 19th-century garden plan? Each design blends nature, geometry, and fantasy — perfect inspiration for new environments and storytelling.

Explore this and more in Special Collections and Archives, MC 3.504.



Laar, G. van. (1802). Magazijn van tuin-sieraden of verzameling van modellen van aanleg en sieraad voor groote en kleine lust-hoven voornamelijk van dezulke die met weinig kosten te maken zijn. Getrokken uit de voornaamste buitenlandsche werken … BEL SB471. L3 1802

What’s in your personal archive?
As part of our Archives Month event on personal archiving, we asked students two simple questions:

“What would you put in your own archive? What’s one thing that tells your story?”

We wanted to get people thinking about what makes an archive personal—how everyday things, from playlists to photos, become part of our own history.

And the students delivered! This is what some of them had to say:

“Family recipes”
“Pictures from my phone”
“My Dad’s hardhat collection”
“Documents from when I left my country because of the war”
“My journals”
“My art”
“My Apple Music listening history”
“My deleted search history”
“My clothes collection from the early 2000s”
“Tiny notes from old friends”
“My plushies”
“My own comics and family videos” “My favorite YouTube videos”
“Travel souvenirs”
“My typewriter collection”
“Trendy clothes, so future people know what we wore”
“My hobbies (Manhwa) where I get humor”
“My photos”
“My childhood clothes”
“My spotify list from jr. high”
“My lab journal”
“Animation cels”
“My camera roll”

Responses ranged from deeply personal to delightfully unexpected, proof that archives aren’t just about the past. They’re about the things that shape us right now. What stories will they tell in 10, 20,...50 years?

So, what would you put in your personal archive?