Visiting Special Collections
Rhode Island College Special Collections is open to the College community and the general public for research. If you need help finding materials, please contact the Special Collections Librarian. We are here to provide support for your research and can suggest collections or parts of collections relevant to the subject of your research. You can also request an appointment by filling out our Contact Form.
Materials in Special Collections do not circulate and cannot be taken out of the Special Collections Reading Room. Food, drink, and pens are also not allowed near the records. You can have cell phones, laptops, note paper, or anything else you need to conduct your research with you. We also allow researchers to take photographs of collection materials, except for those which have access and/or use restrictions. We also provide scanning and duplication services. Prior to viewing any Special Collections materials, researchers must fill out our Researcher Registration Form, which further explains our policies.
Reproduction and Use of Materials
Requests for copies or scans of material held by Rhode Island College Special Collections constitute an agreement that you will not reproduce, transfer, distribute, broadcast, publicly display, offer for sale, or otherwise use or publish any material subject to copyright in excess of fair use, as defined by copyright law, without the express permission of the copyright holder.
Although Rhode Island College Special Collections has physical ownership of the collection and the materials contained therein, it may not own the copyright to these materials, except where it has been explicitly transferred to Rhode Island College, or where it was produced by employees and trustees of the College and work for hire. The researcher is solely responsible for determining the copyright status of materials and obtaining permission to use materials from the copyright holder. Rhode Island College Special Collections cannot provide permission to publish or distribute materials when Rhode Island College is not the copyright holder.
We reserve the right to limit the number of copies made, to restrict the use of rare and valuable items, and to deny a request because of copyright regulations, privacy rights, donor-imposed regulations, or other rights related issues.
Class Visits
Incorporating primary source material into your course allows stands to gain hands-on experience and can improve critical thinking and information literacy skills, as well as create a connection to the past. The faculty in RIC Special Collections can offer a variety of focused class sessions and tours at the archives and in your classroom, whether face-to-face or virtual. We can design instruction sessions specifically to meet the needs of your class. And, since we are focused on the skill, not the subject, it is possible to work with materials that aren’t necessarily related to the subject of the course. Below are some of the sessions we’ve offered:
- Introduction to archives
- Finding primary sources
- Evaluating primary sources
- In-depth research using collection materials