Finding materials at Special Collections and Archives

SCA’s collections are available to the general public as well as NAU students, staff, and faculty. Our physical holdings do not circulate outside of the department, and are available for use in our Reading Room (2nd floor of Cline Library).

Our staff is happy to help you in identifying and requesting materials when you arrive; we recommend that you explore our finding aids at Arizona Archives Online and our digital collections before your visit to refine your search. For specialized or in-depth reference assistance involving our collections, please contact us.

Finding tools

These tips will help you use our online tools to search our collections:

1. Think of an individual, family, institution, location, or topic that relates to the Colorado Plateau or the Four Corners region. Come up with a list of relevant keywords. Check out some of our most popular topics to get you started.
2. Search for books or other published resources by using the Cline Library Quick Search, choosing “Available in the Library” to refine your results. Titles located in Special Collections can be requested at the SCA desk and viewed in the Reading Room during SCA’s open hours.
3. Finding aids for SCA’s unique (primary source) archival materials are on Arizona Archives Online. Click the “Advanced” tab and choose Cline Library Special Collections and Archives and/or Arizona Historical Society/Flagstaff Archives to find material located at Cline Library. Use your keywords to find relevant collections and associated detailed inventories. If no results come up, consider broadening or simplifying your search.
4. A selection of the materials described in our finding aids are available online through the Colorado Plateau Digital Collections. See the video below for more details on searching our digital collections. If your search turns up no results, you may want to return to Arizona Archives Online – our 100,000 digital items represent less than 1% of SCA’s historic holdings.

For more information about accessing and using materials in SCA, see Using Our Collections.