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Travelers & Explorers in Special Collections

This guide offers brief descriptions of relevant travelers and explorers collections. Links are provided whenever online inventories exist.

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Teaching with Primary Source Materials

Our collections exist to be used. When students work directly with primary source materials, historic photographs, and documents that are old or unique, they discover an excitement and passion not generated by textbooks.

Primary source documents can inspire, but they also teach about learning to verify sources, tracking down connections, finding evidence from content and from physical clues.

Travel Accounts in SCUA Collections

Herbert C. Thompson papers 

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Herbert C. Thompson, Diary of a trip to Europe, Aug. 7-Dec. 23, 1910. He spent Aug. 31-Sept. 1 in Ireland (Belfast and Dublin).

Lizzie N. Thompson, Diary of a trip to Europe, Aug. 3-Sept. 19, 1910. She spent Aug. 31-Sept. 1 in Ireland (Belfast and Dublin).


Beekman Family papers

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Carrie Beekman, Diary of a European trip, 1895. She arrived in Queenstown on Sept. 5, 1895, and visited Cork, Glengariffe, Bantry, Killarney, Limerick, Cappoquin, Dublin, and Belfast. She left Belfast on Sept. 19, 1895.

Also contained in the Beekman Family papers are the following brochures:

Gaze's Tours Special Irish Programme. H. Gaze & Sons (Limited), Tourist Directors. Date stamped on cover: 2 Sep. 95.

Prince of Wales Route to Lakes of Killarney via Bantry, Glenariffe and Kenmare. 22 ed., 1895.

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Preferred Citation Format for SCUA Materials

[Identification of item], Date (if known), Collection Title, Collection Number, Box and Folder number [or photo ID number], Special Collections & University Archives, University of Oregon Libraries, Eugene, Oregon.

Mission | Special Collections & University Archives

Special Collections and University Archives is the primary repository for the University of Oregon’s archives, rare books, historic photographs, and one of the largest historical manuscripts collections in the Pacific Northwest. Our mission is to acquire, preserve, and make available a clearly defined set of primary sources and rare books, reflecting the written, visual, and audio history and culture of Oregon, the Pacific Northwest, and selected aspects of American and world history. Our diverse collections support all types of research, from K–12 education to international scholarship. We strive to play an active and creative role in the teaching, research, and service missions of the University.

Historical Collection Strengths

  • Oregon history, politics, culture
  • Authors and illustrators of children’s books
  • The conservative and libertarian movement in the last half of the twentieth century
  • Popular literature, with an emphasis on Western fiction
  • Missionaries to foreign countries, especially in the Far East
  • Labor History
  • Journalism and Communications
  • Photographs of the Northwest, including the Major Lee Moorhouse and Angelus Studio collections
  • Environmental history
  • Northwest literature, including fiction by Ken Kesey, Damon Knight, Kate Wilhelm, Ursula K. Le Guin, Molly Gloss, and William Stafford
  • Doris Ulmann photograph archives of Appalachia
  • Utopian and intentional communities
  • Northwest architecture
  • Northwest economic history