Special Collections and College Archives
Gladys Marcus Library
Goodman Resource Center
Fashion Institute of Technology
27th St. at 7th Ave., E435
New York, NY 10001
212.217.4385 | fitlibsparc@fitnyc.edu
Use the drop down menu next to the search bar to search only Special Collections materials!
Special Collections and College Archives (SPARC) in the Fashion Institute of Technology Library is a highly-specialized repository of primary source research materials related to the fields of fashion and design. The more than 7,000 rare books housed in SPARC have been vetted for their rarity or importance in the fields of fashion, textile, costume, visual arts, and interior design.
The collection includes 3,500 linear feet of books, periodicals, oral histories, and designer scrapbooks as well as over 400 unique manuscript collections that contain more 500,000 works on paper, many of which are original designer sketches. The manuscript collections are especially strong in their documentation of American fashion design from the late nineteenth century through the 1990s, Broadway and Hollywood costume design and the history of New York City’s own Seventh Avenue Garment District.
SPARC welcomes all researchers, FIT graduate and undergraduate students, class visits, and group tours to our reading room. We are committed to providing access to our collections, and we are here to assist you.
Access to Special Collections is by appointment only. To schedule an appointment fill out our appointment request form and someone will reach out shortly. We can also be reached at fitlibsparc@fitnyc.edu or (212) 217-4385. Please fill out our form at least 24 hours before you would like to conduct your research. Before we can confirm your appointment, we need to know what you would like to view during your appointment. Please consult the Researcher Guidelines tab in this guide for information on how to access our catalog and inventory, and please do not hesitate to contact us with any questions.
For our current research schedule, and directions to the collection, please see our Visit page on our main website, and the library homepage for all exceptions & changes to regular hours.
We maintain a closed stacks reading room for access to Special Collections and FIT College Archives materials. All materials are paged prior to your visit: this means books and other materials are retrieved for researchers to view in the reading room and that all material is non-circulating (i.e. researchers cannot browse the stacks on their own as they would in a library).
When scheduling an appointment you will be asked for specific titles and call numbers. To find this information, use the library's OneSearch Catalog (narrow your search to Special Collections). You can also directly search our Periodicals Index, which is searchable by title, date, and subject. If you request any periodicals, please provide the general timespan you would like to view. We can pull approximately up to 3 linear feet of material for your appointment.
For assistance, please contact SPARC via email at fitlibsparc@fitnyc.edu.
The wide range of primary research sources housed in Special Collections are often rare, fragile and valuable. To protect these collections the following prohibitions are enforced during researcher visits:
Keep informed of new things happening in SPARC via our blog, Material Mode.
As defined by the Society of American Archivists, a finding aid is a tool that facilitates the discovery of information within a collection of records. Finding aids put collection materials in context by consolidating pertinent information that would be of use to researchers such as biographical notes, scope/content of the collection including size, media, and arrangement, and administrative history, etc. Finding aids can be described on a variety of levels such as collection, series, folder, and item level or all of the above, which gives the researchers the most detailed idea of what is housed in a particular collection.
Please visit SPARC Connect, our database of archival holdings and digital objects.
| Have a question or comment about these guides? Contact: libraryreference@fitnyc.edu |