The Julian Samora Library at the Institute for Latino Studies

The Julian Samora Library at the Institute for Latino Studies collects, preserves, and provides access to rare books, manuscripts, personal papers, archives, and oral histories related to the Latino experience in the United States with a particular focus on the Midwest.

Julian Samora’s Legacy
The Julian Samora Library is named in memory of the Chicano/a studies pioneer and former Notre Dame professor of sociology (1920–1996) whose work focused on immigration, civil rights, public health, and rural poverty. The Library keeps alive his legacy of research for social justice and social activism by offering faculty and students a forum for archival research and scholarship in Latino studies.

Holdings and Activities
Established in 2000 with an initial gift from scholar and Notre Dame alumnus Gilberto Cárdenas, the Library collections cover such topics as: arts and culture, border studies, civil rights, demographics/census data, education, health, immigration, and labor.

In addition to housing printed material and recordings, the Library provides access to critical online reference sources for scholarly research through the latinostudies.nd.edu website:

• selected Latino arts-related bibliographies
• Researching Latino Visual Arts, A Guide to Finding Archives and Collections of Primary Source Materials
• online oral history interviews with Latino writers and artists
• Toward the Preservation of a Heritage: Latin American and Latino Art in the Midwestern United States. An interactive publication on the history of Latin American and Latino arts in the Midwestern United States during the 20th century. Includes a selected bibliography and exhibition lists.
• The Midwest Latino Arts Documentary Heritage Project (MidLAD).

The Library also advances the educational mission of the University by serving as a resource for professors who wish to introduce their students to primary source research in Latino studies. Library staff regularly provide guidance, assistance, and encouragement to students conducting original research.

The Library is actively involved in outreach to promote the preservation of the Latino heritage by encouraging other libraries and individuals to collect and save documents pertaining to Latino history and culture that have been overlooked by mainstream repositories. The Library strives to collect and preserve the documents of that heritage—many of which remain in the file drawers, storage boxes, closets, and attics of those who created them—before these precious resources are lost.

View Today's Document at the National Archives.