University Libraries

UNT Special Collections holds many rare artifacts, specimens, books, and manuscripts that enable students and faculty to trace the evolution of the book across human history.

Business archives preserve history, memory, and evidence of how organizations and entrepreneurs develop, innovate, and influence society.

Primary sources and published materials documenting crime, criminology, law enforcement, criminal investigations, and conspiracies.

This collecting area includes materials pertaining to clothing, accessories, and traditional attire.

Comprised of material from the 18th century to the present day, these collections preserve and tell the story of scientific and technological advances throughout time.

This collection area includes the personal collections of journalists and photojournalists, as well as the archives of news media outlets and professional news associations.

Literary archives preserve a record of the creative writing process and can include research and correspondence files, early drafts of written work, and even unpublished manuscripts.

UNT Special Collections holds the complete news archive of NBC 5/KXAS (formerly WBAP), the oldest television news station in Texas. Amon G. Carter, operator of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram and NBC affiliated radio station WBAP, constructed the Fort Worth television station that would run WBAP-TV.

This collection includes historical and contemporary documentation of music, dance, and theater including the archives of performers, costume and set designers, and performing arts organizations.

The Photography and Visual Materials Collection documents the history of photography and other visual mediums through the works of both traditional and vernacular artists.

Special Collections hold over 40,000 rare and distinctive books. You may search the complete collection through the library catalog.

The Social Change archives seek to document the experiences and accomplishments of people and organizations that have challenged the status quo for the betterment of humanity.

This diverse collecting area features specimens of early card and board games, archival collections of athletes and coaches, and faculty papers related to sports and leisure.

Using a broad definition of Texana – not just materials about Texas, but works by Texas writers, works printed/published in Texas, and the work of Texas artists and illustrators – UNT Libraries’ Special Collections houses unique items that showcase the diverse history, culture, and art of the Lone Star State.

UNT Special Collections has partnered with National Juneteenth Museum to preserve and provide access to museum collections. Collections temporarily housed at UNT are permanently owned by the museum.

The University Archive collects, preserves, and makes available official and historical records of the University of North Texas.

Larry Austin (1930-2018) was a member of the UNT College of Music faculty from 1978 until 1996, and served as director of the Center for Experimental Music and Intermedia (CEMI) from 1983 to 1991, and in 1995 and 1996. The Larry Austin Collection consists of 88 boxes of musical works by Larry Austin and includes his compositions, sound recordings, films and videos.

An artists’ book is more than just a book. It is an artwork, or art object, that incorporates the form of concept of the book. A zine (short for magazine) is a handmade, self-published book that is created for the purpose of sharing knowledge, history, experiences, and art with others.

Leon Breeden was the director of Jazz Studies at North Texas from 1959 until

1. He continued the efforts of his predecessor, Gene Hall, and facilitated the rise of the One O’Clock Lab Band to national and international prominence in spite of intense opposition to jazz in higher education.

Dr. Paul G. Bonneau was an alumnus of UNT, receiving his BM, MM, and DMA degrees from the College of Music. Bonneau was active in the Dallas-Fort Worth area as an instructor, conductor, and composer, teaching at UNT as well as at Richland College in Dallas. He was the founding music director of the Chancel Orchestra of Trietsch Memorial United Methodist Church in Flower Mound, Texas, and music director of the Flower Mound Symphony Orchestra.

A 1997 gift of the Willis Conover Jazz Preservation Foundation, Inc., the collection consists of over 22,000 recordings of numerous formats, correspondence, memos, magazines, record catalogs, manuscripts, program notes, memorabilia, photographs, books, and other personal items. The materials are not only from his work at the VOA, but also from his early career at WTBO and WWDC, and his correspondence with sci-fi and horror writer H.P. Lovecraft during Conover’s teen years. As Conover remained an independent contractor with the VOA for his entire career, his collection also contains numerous side-projects for radio and television, including work for WCBS in New York.

Merrill Ellis (1916-1981), founder of the electronic music program at The University of North Texas, was born on December 9, 1916 in Cleburne, Texas, just south of Fort Worth. He began his studies at The University of Oklahoma in 1935, earning a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in 1939, and a Master of Music in 1941, and studied composition privately with Roy Harris, Spencer Norton and Charles Garland. His master’s thesis at OU was entitled An Evaluation of the Oklahoma Federal Music Project. He pursued further graduate studies at the University of Missouri from 1948 to 1951, and continued to study privately with Spencer Norton (1940-1941), Roy Harris (1950-1960) and Darius Milhaud (1957).

The UNT Music Library has three major collections related to Duke Ellington: The Duke Ellington Manuscript Collection, The Rhodes Baker Collection, and the Dennis Askey Collection. The Duke Ellington Manuscript Collection consists of one box of music manuscripts and dye-line copies of music by Duke Ellington, Johnny Hodges, Cat Anderson, Lou Carter, and Paul Gonsalves, including a 1-page autograph music manuscript in Ellington’s hand of “Get It Over.” The Rhodes Baker Collection, named for a Houston-area attorney and Ellington fan, includes numerous unreleased performances by the Ellington orchestra, and rare records. The Dennis Askey Collection, named for a former U.S. Foreign Service Officer, includes rare films such as footage from the 1962 First International Jazz Festival in Washington, D.C., as well as films from his travels in China and Afghanistan.

The Maynard Ferguson Collection at the UNT Music Library contains over 750 arrangements for Ferguson’s bands from the 1950s through the early 2000s, and includes the work of arrangers such as Willie Maiden, Don Rader, Slide Hampton, Denis DiBlasio, and Steve Wiest, among many others. The collection also includes copies of published arrangements, as well as Thai and Indian music that Ferguson collected. Access provided only by special arrangement with the Music Library.

The Sycamore Library serves as home to portions of the UNT Libraries’ general collections. These collections include Geography, Political Science, Public Administration, Business, and Law materials. The following call numbers can be found at the Sycamore Library – G, HA, HB, HC, HE, HF, HG, HJ, J, JA, JC, JF, JJ, JK, JL, JN, JQ, JS, JV, JX, JZ, K, KB, KD, KE, KF, KG, KH, KJ-KKZ, KL_KWX, KZ.

“Government documents” is a term used to categorize any information produced at government expense and disseminated by a government agency. As such, material produced by government bodies at the local, state, federal, and international level, in addition to government-funded agencies and organizations, are considered government documents. The Sycamore Library houses collections the UNT Libraries receive as a member of the Federal Depository Library Program (FDLP) and the Texas State Depository Program. These collections cover a wide range of topics and subjects as well as time periods from colonial times to the present. The UNT Libraries committed to retain government publications as a Preservation Steward partner to the Government Publishing Office (GPO).

The UNT Media Library video game collection began in 2009 with a small grant and has grown to include services and collections to support student recreation, research, and coursework. The Media Library Collection includes video games for all major consoles, gaming equipment, virtual reality devices, legacy consoles, tabletop games, breakouts, and escape room supplies.

Composer, arranger, and music educator Don Gillis was a producer for NBC Radio during the Toscanini era. This collection, donated to the University of North Texas Music Library by Barbara Gillis after her husband’s death in 1978, includes a complete set of tapes from the radio series Toscanini: The Man Behind the Legend. It also includes manuscripts, other copies, and tapes of Gillis’s works, an unpublished autobiography, papers, pictures, and scrapbooks.

Merritt Johnson (1902-1978) was a pianist, organist, and composer on the faculty at Northern State College (now University) in Aberdeen, South Dakota, and was a student of Joseph Lhevinne and Darius Milhaud. His collection at UNT consists of five boxes of music compositions, with numerous materials in the UNT Digital Library.

The Juvenile collection at the Sycamore Library is a collection of fiction, nonfiction, and reference materials for readers ranging from preschool to young adult. The collection supports students and faculty in the College of Education and serves as a pleasure reading collection for faculty, students, and their children. The Curriculum Materials Collection includes textbooks, instructional materials, and instructional kits that support the curriculum needs of students and faculty in the College of Education.

The Gordon Knox Film Collections contains over 100 films created by Texas-born filmmaker Gordon Knox (1906 – 1992) or Mr. Knox’s production company, The Princeton Film Center. The collection contains short and feature-length documentaries produced between 1937 and 1964 for the United States Armed Forces, state and federal government agencies, non-profit organizations and private sector clients. Currently, 67 films in the Gordon Knox collection are available through the UNT Digital Library.

World renowned bandleader Stan Kenton bequeathed his entire orchestra library to the University of North Texas. The collection comprises more than 2,000 manuscripts representing the work of Kenton’s famous arrangers including Bill Holman, Pete Rugolo, Robert Graettinger, and Bill Russo. The Stan Kenton Collection is supplemented by a gift from Noel Wedder, Kenton’s publicist, of over six hundred photographs of Kenton and his orchestra and a collection of research materials related to Robert Graettinger, donated by his biographer Robert Morgan.

Composer William P. Latham served on the faculty of the University of North Texas College of Music from 1965 until his retirement in 1984, at which time he was appointed Professor Emeritus. Throughout his extensive career, he taught both theory and composition. The collection consists of dozens of boxes of Latham’s compositions, related materials, and papers; numerous items are also available in the general, circulating collection of the UNT Music Library.

This project was conceived in 1996 both as a multimedia thematic catalog of the UNT Music Library’s collection of early editions of operas and ballets by the French Baroque composer Jean-Baptiste Lully (1632-1687), and as a nucleus for collecting information useful to anyone studying those works. A pilot version of the Lully Web Project has been on the web since 1997.

Bob McGrath is a singer, composer, and actor best known for his role as Bob Johnson on Sesame Street from 1969 until 2016. Mr. McGrath donated a collection of 24 boxes of band and symphonic works to the UNT Music Library in 2017, and the collection is currently being processed for detailed description.

The Sycamore Library has a modest but diverse collection of maps and posters produced by U.S. federal and Texas state government agencies as well as by commercial publishers such as National Geographic. Map holdings include geologic, topographic, and historic county plat maps of Texas; thematic maps showing features such as climate, population density, and industrial activity; WWII-era news maps; and literary maps depicting locations and journeys in classic fiction. We even have maps and atlases of other planets in our solar system, and star charts that map the entire known universe. Posters include World War I and II propaganda as well as educational and promotional materials from NASA, the U.S. Defense Department, and many other government agencies.

Established in 1976, the Media Library collection contains materials covering all academic disciplines and all genres of film & games in a variety of formats. This collection includes DVDs, video & tabletop games, and online videos. Older formats such as laser discs, reels of motion picture film, filmstrips, audio cassettes, CD ROMs, and individual slides can also be found in this collection.

The UNT Libraries provides current UNT students, faculty and staff with access to hundreds of educational films that can be viewed entirely online. By making these films available online for anytime/anywhere access, the Libraries continue to improve the support of distance, hybrid and traditional education at UNT.

This gateway to Texas history materials contains unique collections from Texas libraries, museums, archives, historical and genealogical societies, and private family collections. The Portal features digital reproductions of photographs, maps, letters, documents, books, artifacts, newspapers, and more. In addition, the Portal’s Texas History 4 Teachers pages provide relevant materials for students and classroom teachers. To learn more about the Portal’s contents, please explore by collections.

The archives contain materials submitted to the seminal avant-garde magazine Source: Music of the Avant-Garde during the years 1967-1973. Submissions to the magazine range from the indeterminate, graphic, conceptual, performance art, electronic and multimedia. The collection includes scores, photographs, recordings, articles and correspondences both published and unpublished. In addition to original materials from issues 1-11, the collection includes scores, photographs, and layouts for the never-published issue 12.

This collection contains items that once belonged to Schoenberg’s cousin Hans Nachod, an operatic tenor for whom the role of Waldemar in Gurre-Lieder was created. It includes many letters from Schoenberg to Nachod, a few from Nachod to Schoenberg, as well as a number of music manuscripts in Schoenberg’s hand, among which are early songs and arrangements.

The collection consists of approximately 66 boxes of music books, scores, correspondence, memorabilia, manuscripts, photographs, and recordings relating to the career of composer and University of North Texas alumna, Julia Smith (1905-1989). Best known for her six operas and biography of Aaron Copland (1955), Smith spent over fifty years as a composer, pianist, and advocate of American music. The collection was bequeathed to the University of North Texas Music Library upon her death in 1989.

Photo credit: UNT Portal to Texas History.

The UNT Digital Library is home to materials from the University’s research, creative, and scholarly activities, and it also showcases content from the UNT Libraries’ collections. Materials include theses and dissertations, artwork, performances, musical scores, journals, government documents, rare books, historical posters, the CyberCemetery of defunct government agency web sites, and much, much more. To learn more about the Digital Library’s contents, please explore by collections.