Special Collections and University Archives in Second Life

We welcome you to visit our Virtual Archives in Second Life! Virtual worlds are where users create avatars--or online personas--to explore and interact with others in real time. In the summer of 2009, Special Collections and University Archives decided to use this technology as a way of allowing scholars to virtually "walk" Stanford's closed manuscripts stacks and browse some of our collections—a practice not offered in real life. Additionally, we hope our virtual archives will introduce new users to the rewards of primary source research and further our efforts in promoting archival literacy.

Stanford's Virtual Archive contains a small, but growing, subset of some of our collections. Patrons can open virtual manuscript boxes and a sampling of scanned documents from the real life box will appear along with a link to that collection’s online finding aid. Here are some of the collections you will find in our virtual archives:

M0070 Meyer Lissner

M0080 Ambrose Bierce

M0121 British Authors

M0122 American Authors

M1090 R. Buckminster Fuller

M1230 Ampex Corporation Records

M1602 French Colonial Africa: Christian missionary postcards

Mss Photo 0221 Historic Monterey (CA)

Mss Photo 0440 Ira Nowinski collection

Mss Photo 0182 Historic San Francisco

SC 001 Stanford Commission of Engineers: 1906 Earthquake

SC 206 Stanford 1906 Earthquake collection

SC 034 John Casper Branner

SC 455 Stanford Japanese American students

Reference in Second Life: