Special Collections Research Center

University Archives

About the University Archives

Extension Home Demonstration meeting, ca. 1930

Extension home demonstration agent demonstrating child care skills to African American girls, ca. 1930.

The University Archives is a division within NCSU Libraries' Special Collections Research Center. It serves as the administrative memory of NC State University, and its function is to preserve for the future the legal, administrative, and historical records of the University and make them available to all interested researchers. For more information on materials held by the University Archives, please look at

List of Archival Holdings
Photograph Collection

By centralizing records on campus, the Archives promotes greater and more efficient use of them, relieves individual offices of the responsibility of servicing them, releases considerable filing equipment and space, and reduces the fire hazard created by storing records in inaccessible areas. By preserving the University's documentary heritage, the Archives also makes it possible to study the contributions by members of the University community to the institutions growth. Beyond collecting the institutional records of NCSU, the University Archives and the Special Collections Research Center also collect materials on student life and organizations and major campus events and occasionally conduct documentary projects.

Virginia Adams doing lab work in Food Science

Virginia Adams conducting food science lab work, ca. 1962.

As a vital part of the land-grant institution, the University Archives solicits, preserves, and makes accessible resources that document the growth and development of the university and its continued service to the people of North Carolina. For the university itself, the University Archives centralizes resources, promoting greater and more efficient use of its records. For the people of North Carolina, it provides a resource for study and scholarship while ensuring that future generations will have resources available to understand and interpret the history and achievements of North Carolina State University.

The location and hours of operation for the University Archives are the same as those for the Special Collections Research Center. For information on the development of the University Archives, see Origins of the University Archives.

Because of the similarity in name, the NC State University Archives is sometimes confused with a different entity, the State Archives of North Carolina.