About Us
Special Collections is comprised of four major areas of collecting and research interests. These areas are the University Archives, the Rare Book Collections, the Manuscript Collections, and the Warren E. Burger Collection. They are housed together to create the Special Collections in the Earl Gregg Swem Library.
Each of these collecting and research modules has a conjunctively symbiotic relationship with the others. These relationships make the whole of Special Collections more valuable to the researcher than each of its collections on its own merit.
Here you may find: rare books owned by alumni, manuscript collections that were created by the owners of private libraries which we have acquired, records of the College of William and Mary which also contain the class notes and bursars accounts of many famous Virginians, our Chancellor and Supreme Court Justice Warren E. Burger's papers, personal papers of illustrious faculty and students, and books about the College and her people as well as books written by faculty and alumni.