The American Civil War Collection includes surgical instruments, medical equipment, diaries, photographs, correspondence, digitized books, and other original material. This collection is a curated selection highlighting a portion of the material held by the Alabama Museum of the Health Sciences, the Mervyn H. Sterne Library, the Reynolds-Finley Historical Library, and the UAB Archives related to the Civil War.

The Birmingham Medical College Collection is a curated selection drawing from various collections intended to highlight Birmingham's first medical school, which operated between 1894 and 1915. This school provides a glimpse into early medical education in the South. Items from the UAB Archives include photographs, diplomas, correspondence, and printed material such as programs, invitations, and matriculation cards.

This set of collections, created in collaboration with the Collat School of Business, provides access to valuable educational resources. It includes two oral history collections from the Academy of Management (AOM). The first collection, the Academy of Management Oral History Collection, features interviews conducted with leaders in the field of business management from 1957 to 1977, while the second collection, The Entrepreneurship Oral History Collection, includes interviews from 2024 that capture some of the history of the AOM’s Entrepreneurship Divisions 40 years of existence.

This collection features rare materials from the Reynolds-Finley Historical Library highlighting various contagious diseases throughout history such as plague, smallpox and yellow fever. Especially relevant today, the collection explores topics such as vaccination debates, public health measures to stop the spread of disease, quarantining the infected, and more. The library holds a sizeable collection of materials pertaining to contagious diseases and the digitization of these items is an ongoing effort.

Curated by Dr. Dennis G. Pappas, Sr., this exhibit explores the history of otolaryngology through the numerous books and instruments he has donated to the Alabama Museum of the Health Sciences and the Reynolds-Finley Historical Library at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. The exhibit features videos of Dr. Dennis G. Pappas, Sr., narrating stories of major events in the history of otolaryngology and explaining their connection to overall medicine. Visit the "Narrations of ENT: The Dennis G. Pappas History of Otolaryngology Exhibit" website for more information.

The COVID-19 pandemic has created challenges on a global scale forcing us to change the way we live, work, and interact with the world. With UAB’s nationally recognized healthcare programs students and faculty have been on the front lines of efforts to combat this pandemic while also finding ways to continue to provide a university experience and foster learning across the entire University. In an effort to recognize, document, and preserve the experiences of the UAB community during this important time in our history UAB Libraries is collecting accounts from the UAB community depicting a wide range of experiences during the Coronavirus Global Pandemic. Items in the collection include original written accounts, audio-visual recordings, digital photographs, and artwork documenting COVID-19 at UAB. Visit our website to tell your story.

All UAB theses and dissertations dating back to 1970 are available in Digital Commons, UAB’s institutional repository. They can also be accessed through ProQuest (requires UAB login) and our library catalog. Please contact the library if you are unable to locate a specific work.

The UAB Department of English publishes three journals, the Birmingham Poetry Review, Nelle, and Memorandum. Birmingham Poetry Review was founded in 1987 and features original poetry, translations, and reviews. poemmemoirstory (PMS) was founded in 2001 and features innovative literary writing by both emerging and established women writers (cis and transgender); in 2018 poemmemoirstory was renamed Nelle. Memorandum was founded in 2013 and is written and designed by students in the Professional Writing Program. Memorandum is not currently included in this collection but it can be found through the English department's website.

Since 1999, UAB students enrolled in the Ethnographic Filmmaking course have made documentary films about communities and issues in the Birmingham area. Students work collaboratively to research a community or subculture, conduct qualitative interviews of community members, film significant activities and events that reveal the shared culture of the group, and edit their footage to create a documentary account of their community.

A collection of previous exhibit panel series displayed within the UAB Libraries. The collection includes Fairy Tales and Medicine, Treasures of UAB Historical Collections, U.S. Civil War, UAB and Alabama Governors, and Women and Medicine.

The Florence Nightingale Collection of the Reynolds-Finley Historical Library includes 58 personal letters by Nightingale, dated 1853 to 1893, covering military and civil hospitals, nursing, sanitary affairs and public health issues in India, and various charitable contributions. The original 50 letters were acquired by Dr. Lawrence Reynolds in February of 1951. In January of 2020, eight additional letters were generously donated to UAB by The Upper Room, a faith-based organization of Nashville, Tennessee, upon the closure of its Christian Art Museum. They are held in the Reynolds-Finley Historical Library on behalf of the UAB School of Nursing. Also, an original photograph of Florence Nightingale was donated by the Nu Chapter of Sigma Theta Tau and the University of Alabama School of Nursing in honor of Dr. Marie O'Koren. For more information on this collection, visit our virtual exhibit, The Life & Letters of Florence Nightingale.

This collection is made up of material from the Alabama Museum of the Health Sciences, the Reynolds-Finley Historical Library, the Sterne Library Rare Book Collection, and the UAB Archives that was digitized for a variety of reasons including greater accessibility, frequent use, and temporary exhibits. This collection is designed to provide greater accessibility to items held in Special Collections that do not yet fit into larger collections.

This collection celebrates the work and dedication of the supporters of the Historical Collections of UAB Libraries, including the Alabama Museum of the Health Sciences, the Reynolds-Finley Historical Library, and the UAB Archives, as well as UAB Libraries as a whole. If you would like to learn more, visit our accompanying exhibit. At present, this exhibit remembers Dr. Arnold G. “Gil” Diethelm (1932-2021), Dr. Charles A. “Scotty” McCallum, Jr. (1925-2021), and Mr. Edward L. Ramsey (1926-2021) for their contributions to the University of Alabama at Birmingham, to UAB Libraries, and to their respective fields.

This collection features the incunabula held within the Reynolds-Finley Historical Library. The term incunabulum (singular) or incunabula (plural) translates from Latin as “cradle” and refers to the cradle or infancy of printing. Works printed between the invention of the printing press in approximately 1450 and the end of the 15th century, or 1500, are given this terminology. The library holds over 30 incunabula, and the digitization of these items is ongoing.

In 1917 Dr. Lawrence Reynolds (1889-1961), an Alabama native, sailed from New York to France to work as a radiologist at an American-supported hospital in Paris. The photographs in this collection document his tenure at the American Military Hospital No. 1. The collection includes photos of the hospital's staff, patients, and annex in the village of Juilly, along with architecture, the trenches along the front, shell-damaged villages, military officials and soldiers, tourist sites in Paris and the French countryside, and various friends and associates photographed in leisure activities. Upon his discharge in 1919, Dr. Reynolds returned to the U.S. The Reynolds photographs are housed in the UAB Archives.

The UAB Libraries holds 21 letters written by famed French novelist Marcel Proust (1871-1922). These multi-page letters were written to his friends the Duc de Guiche, the Duchesse de Clermont-Tonnerre, the Comte de Lauris, and the Baroness Harty de Pierrebourg. As part of Marcel Proust at UAB, a multi-event commemoration held in 1988 in honor of the anniversary of the publication of Swann’s Way, the university acquired 15 letters from Proust to Guiche and Clermont-Tonnerre, and in 2023 the university acquired six letters from him to Lauris and Harty de Pierrebourg. Additionally, in 2001 a manuscript collection related to Proust and containing two Proust inscriptions was donated to UAB. The 21 letters and three items from the manuscript collection are available in this digital collection. The Proust items are housed in the UAB Archives.

Dating from the late 19th and early 20th centuries, these catalogs feature a variety of instruments, tools, and supplies that were available for purchase by medical practitioners at the time. Each catalog includes black and white drawings of the equipment being sold, detailed descriptions, and prices. Some catalogs contain photos, color drawings, and testimonials or instructions in using the equipment and performing new procedures. The catalogs are housed in the Reynolds-Finley Historical Library, and some of the depicted instruments can be found in the Alabama Museum of the Health Sciences.

Mervyn Hayden Sterne (1892-1973), a local businessman and philanthropist, was an early supporter of UAB. On October 23, 1974, the new University College Library at UAB was dedicated in memory of Mervyn Hayden Sterne. The Sterne collection, which contains many of Mr. Sterne's personal items including awards, degrees, letters, and photographs, is housed in the UAB Archives.

The Reynolds-Finley Historical Library holds several medieval and Renaissance manuscripts dating from the mid-14th through the 16th centuries. These works are mostly medical and scientific tracts, including ones by leading thinkers of the period such as Arnold of Villanova, Petrus Peregrinus, and al-Razi (Rhazes). Learn more about these manuscripts.

The Reynolds-Finley Historical Library houses the rare and unique items that make up the Middle East Medical Collection. This is a rare collection compiled of both print and manuscript materials in languages including Arabic, Persian and Syriac that discuss various topics within both medicine and religion. Within this collection, Some items of note in this collection are two Qurans with illuminated title pages, several works by renowned Greek physician Hippocrates (450-380 BCE) and 13th century Arab physician Ibn al-Nafis (c. 1210 – 1288), works on pathology and therapeutics, and much more. The digitization efforts of this important collection is ongoing.

Pellagra, a nutritional deficiency disease, became an epidemic in the Southern United States that started and ended in Alabama. It was first recognized in epidemic proportions by Alabama physician Dr. George H. Searcy in 1906, and ending with Dr. Tom D. Spies' nutritional treatment clinic in Birmingham, which operated from 1937 to 1960. In 1914 Dr. Carl A. Grote, Walker County public health officer, was the first to conduct field work to determine the etiology of the disease in an actual community setting. He conducted this work prior to and independent of Dr. Joseph Goldberger who is righty credited for discovering the nature of pellagra but who at Grote's writing had only studied the disease in controlled environments.

This collection chronicles Alabama's valiant campaign against pellagra. For more information on this topic, visit our web exhibit, Pellagra in Alabama: A Valiant Struggle Against ‘The Red Death.’

In response to frequent public requests regarding the portraits located throughout UAB a project was initiated in 2009 to provide greater accessibility to the portraits through this collection. This collection includes over 80 portraits, names of the subjects, location of the portraits, and ways to learn more.

The Reynolds-Finley Historical Library houses a large collection of rare Alabama medical journals. This collection includes the Alabama Insane Hospital Reports spanning from 1869-1964, the Transactions of the Medical Association of the State of Alabama, the Alabama Medical and Surgical Age, and others. The Alabama Insane Hospital Reports discuss patient care and treatment at the Alabama State Hospital for the Insane, later known as the Bryce Hospital, which was opened in Tuscaloosa in 1861. Through the rest of the nineteenth century, the patients of the hospital were segregated, and in 1901, a second institution was built for African American patients near Mobile, Alabama, named Mount Vernon Hospital for the Colored Insane, and later called the Searcy Hospital. In addition to Bryce and Searcy Hospital, these reports also include a third institution that opened near Bryce Hospital in 1922 initially called the Alabama Home for Mental Defectives, and later called the Partlow State Hospital. The digitization of these medical journals is an ongoing project.

This collection contains recordings of the Reynolds-Finley Historical Lecture Series and recordings related to the Reynolds-Finley Historical Library and its holdings.

StoryCorps is an independent nonprofit whose mission is to provide Americans of all backgrounds and beliefs with the opportunity to record, share, and preserve the stories of their lives. Since 2003, StoryCorps has collected and archived more than 30,000 interviews from more than 60,000 participants. Each conversation is recorded on a free CD to share, and is preserved at the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress. In January of 2011, members of the StoryCorps staff parked their Airstream mobile recording studio outside of the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute in Birmingham to record the stories of local residents. This is a collection of edited versions of those interviews. To listen to any of the complete interviews, please contact the UAB Libraries, Digital Collections. For more information about StoryCorps, please visit their website, storycorps.org.

Between 1975 and 1984 the now defunct Oral History Office within the UAB History Department conducted 139 interviews with Alabama residents on audio cassettes ranging in length from 30 to 120 minutes. This collection includes a wealth of invaluable material covering everything from Alabama political and civic leaders, civil rights in Alabama, ethnic history of Alabama, folk history of Alabama, labor history of Alabama, history of the Sloss company, history of Alabama women, historic Alabama communities, Alabama refugee experiences, and history of the University of Alabama at Birmingham.

The Southern Surgical & Gynecological Association was founded in Birmingham, Alabama in 1887, and renamed the Southern Surgical Association (SSA) in 1916. Since the association’s first annual meeting on December 4-6, 1888, the publication of annual transactions has followed. Under the auspices of the Southern Surgical Association, the archival copies of the transactions held in the Reynolds-Finley Historical Library are made available in this digital collection.

In 2019 UAB celebrated its 50th anniversary and initiated a project to commemorate that accomplishment. As part of the celebration members of the community were given the opportunity to share their memories of UAB through an oral history project using a mobile recording audio booth. The audio booth resided in different locations around campus to provide greater accessibility and spark inspiration based on the location. This collection includes recordings of oral histories and photographs of the participants.

This collection is made up of publications created and distributed by UAB including Aura Literary Arts Review, DIRECTIONS, Inquiro, Kaleidoscope, Annual Report: Student Yearbook (renamed Phoenix in 1973), and Expo. Additional UAB publications can be found on the UAB Digital Commons.

WBHM is a local Birmingham public radio station founded in 1976 and licensed to UAB that includes programming from NPR. The Listener Newsletter was a guide showing WBHM programing that was published on a monthly basis. This collection includes programs spanning from 1977 to 2006.

Dr. William C. Carter, a Distinguished Professor at UAB and Marcel Proust scholar, donated this collection of letters to the UAB Archives. Dr. Carter was a faculty member in the UAB World Languages and Literatures Department and served as department chair from 1979 until 1990.

This collection features 60 handwritten letters, post cards, and typewritten messages by world-renowned physician, Sir William Osler, to Ned Milburn, a life-long personal friend. These communications range from 1865-1919 and include details of Sir William Osler’s early and later life. Though the letters covering the early years of his medical career were lost, letters from his later life discuss medical topics, especially tuberculosis, and the collection reveals details of an important friendship that surely impacted his contributions to the field of medicine. This collection is housed in the Reynolds-Finley Historical Library.