Unique collections

Team members working together in the Basque Library.

Found nowhere else

The Libraries are home to collections you can’t find anywhere else. Specializing in Northern Nevada, the Basque Diaspora, and the Great Basin, we offer over 9,000 unique primary source collections that together make about 3 miles of papers, 1 million photographs, and over 12 million digital objects. In addition to carefully curated map, poster, rare book, and artists' books collections, the Libraries unique collections include locally produced virtual reality applications, historical data sets, and even tree carvings.

Our materials by the numbers...

3,522 Primary source collections
1000000 Photographs
12000000 Digital objects

Where to look for unique content

Plat map showing a grid layout on a section of Nevada.

Mary B. Ansari Map Library

Over 200,000 maps including topographic and earth science themes, for Nevada, Great Basin Region, United States and the world.

Members of the Basque Library team working in the Library's reading room.

Jon Bilbao Basque Library

The Basque Library collects all types of materials on Basque topics, both published and unpublished, no matter their physical form.

Student working looking at negatives using a light box in the Special Collections reading room.

Special Collections and University Archives

Unique and special materials focused on Northern Nevada and the Great Basin comprising over 13 million items in more than 3,000 collections and over 36,000 publications.

Interested in a particular type of content?

Start exploring here

Preserving tree carvings

Lertxun-marrak: The Arborglyph Collaborative is a tri-state academic partnership between University of Nevada, Reno, Boise State University, and California State University, Bakersfield. The partnership utilizes grant funding to establish a network of interested organizations, create protocols for documenting Basque arborglyphs, and to provide a framework for the public to more easily access information about these historical carvings.

Learn more about the Collaborative
Still from a promotional video about the collaborative showing a tree carving on an aspen. The carving is of an individual.
Cover from one of the field notebooks used during the Wheeler expedition to survey the American West.

Collections as data

Find the text, GIS, or scientific data you need for your next project. Bulk data exports may be available in some cases.

Narrator from the 1000 miles video project.

The Foundry

The Foundry highlights Libraries' work with a range of partners using the resources, collections and expertise in our institution.

One of the virtual rooms in the Hidden Cave project.

Virtual reality projects

Download and explore immersive experiences that preserve history and culture of Northern Nevada.