Home of Special Collections and University Archives

Welcome

At the heart of UM’s Coral Gables campus, a former lecture hall has been renovated and transformed into a vibrant place of learning and discovery to benefit the entire community. The Kislak Center is home to the libraries’ unique and wide-ranging Special Collections, University Archives, and the Kislak Collection.

During the day, the Kislak Center serves as the Special Collections and Archives Reading Room, where Center faculty and staff provide reference assistance and public access to the wide-ranging, unique, and valuable materials housed within the Center.

The collections within the Kislak Center contain antiquarian books and maps, manuscripts, and archival collections. Strengths of the collections include an emphasis on the history of Miami and the region, with particular focus on the Americas and the Caribbean, as well as offering one of the nation’s broadest collections of zines and artists’ books. The collections offer surprising range to researchers, students, and the general public, who visit from all over the world to access the papers of organizations and businesses, unique manuscript documents, archives of writers and artists, travel journals and scrapbooks, diaries, games, advertisements, oral histories, cookbooks and menus, popular graphic arts materials and ephemera, and much more. Librarians and archivists in the Center are dedicated to adding voices from across the hemisphere, and we are always interested in hearing from potential collaborators to tell the stories of Miami and its many diasporas.

After hours and on weekends, the Center hosts public programming for the University’s libraries, centers, institutes, schools, and colleges. The events hosted here often reflect and amplify library collections and activities, and always foreground the unique intellectual and artistic life of our community.

Additionally, the Center boasts vast gallery spaces that showcase dynamic exhibits, generally rotating on a yearly basis, to provide visitors a glimpse of the unique and remarkable materials across the Special Collections, University Archives, and the Kislak Collection. The center also includes a state-of-the art classroom, archival processing and office areas, climate controlled private stacks and vault, and a conservation lab. Center faculty and staff work closely with our colleagues in the Cuban Heritage Collection, and across the UM Libraries, to preserve, describe, and provide access to the vast wealth of materials we are privileged to steward.

The collection and space renovation were made possible by a landmark gift to the University by the Kislak Family Foundation.

Image Credits:
Left – Casuso, Martin Eduardo. Detail from Gabriel: A Book to Burn, Vol. 2. Miami, Fla: Martin Eduardo Casuso, 2001. | Center – Si a la vida, no a la mina (Gianmeza, 2022) | Right – University Archives