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Civil War Resources in the Special Collections Research Center

The Special Collections Research Center has extensive holdings of manuscripts and rare books dealing with the American Civil War. This guide describes the bulk of those holdings, although it is not a comprehensive list.

Access Tools

Special Collections Research Center Access Tools: There are a variety of tools available to guide you in finding materials in the Special Collections Research Center (SCRC). Don't forget that you also may come into the SCRC in person and consult with the staff member on duty for guidance.

Printed Sources

The Library Catalog

The library catalog contains entries for the books, journals, government documents, manuscripts, and audiovisual materials owned by Swem, other W&M campus libraries (Biology, Business, Chemistry, Geology, Law, Music, Philosophy, and Physics), the libraries of Colonial Williamsburg, the Virginia Institute of Marine Science, and Richard Bland College (a college affiliated with W&M). Each entry contains descriptive information about an item such as title, author, publisher, publication date, call number, location, and related subject headings. Subject headings are useful to help you find additional titles on your topic.

Although the library catalog contains the journals we get, it does not give you citations to specific journal articles. In other words, this is not the place to go to identify articles in journals.