Meriam Library Special Collections is a part of Meriam Library which contains a archive of written and pictorial materials which document the historical as well as the contemporary issues of the 12-county region known as "northeastern California".

Special Collections is composed of several "collections" which are housed together in this non-circulating area of the library because of rarity, source, condition or form. These collections include: the North East California Collection(N.E. Cal), Archives Collection, Rare Book Collection as well as an extensive manuscript collection and historic map and photograph collection.

The N.E. Cal collection contains anything pertaining to the 12 northeastern counties of California. The Archives collection contains any book published by a CSU, Chico faculty or staff member as well as historic items pertaining to the history of the school, starting with items from the Normal School through the present.

The Rare Book collections is exactly what the name implies, books that in many cases are one of a kind. Such as the oldest book in the Meriam Library, a Latin bible from 1398.

The manuscript collection contains material that is not published. This includes material such as ledgers, correspondence, files, business records, artifacts, and many other items. Special Collections houses many popular manuscript collections including The John and Annie Bidwell Papers, Yuba Manufacturing Collection, Clair Engle Collection and 285 others.

Special Collections also has an extensive historic photograph collection of nearly 51,000 images and an historic map collection of nearly 10,000 maps. Both of these collections are continually growing and becoming more accessible as they are scanned and put on the online catalog.

All of these items can be searched by going to the Research Station http://www.csuchico.edu/library/ or for specific information about Special Collections http://www.csuchico.edu/lbib/spc/netpages/home.html here. Access to the material is provided primarily through the Meriam Library's online Library Catalog. Use of these items is limited to the Special Collections reading room and are available for research by faculty, students, visiting scholars, and community members.

MLSC Imagery on Chico Wiki

Many of the historical photographs from the MLSC on this wiki are believed to be in the public domain as most of them were photographed prior to 1923. Some may have been photographed between 1923 and 1963. In that case, copyrights expire after 28 years unless renewed by the copyright holder. If you suspect that a photo is still under copyright, please comment on the offending page or simply remove it with a note. This wiki is a 100% non-commercial entity and none of the historical photos fall under the "Creative Commons-By License" as they are suspected to be in the public domain. See http://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ15t.html for additional details on copyrights.

This entry is a seed, a starting point for writing a full entry. You can help LocalWiki Chico by expanding it! Just click the "Edit" button.