OneSearch Help

Primary sources held in SPARC include scrapbooks, oral histories, sketches, illustrations, monographs, rare books, and journals. The wide range of primary research sources housed in Special Collections is searchable via the FIT Library's online catalog - we call it OneSearch

We need to know what you want to view at least 24 hours in advance of your research appointment with us.

To provide that information to us:

  1. Consult our various web pages that generally list the contents of our Manuscript collections, Oral Histories  and Periodicals. These are not comprehensive lists, but will allow you to browse a portion of our holdings. Keep in mind that you may need to first do some preliminary research to figure out what of our contents will support your project before you reach out to us.
  2. Go to OneSearch, and search for the items you wish to view, narrowing your search to the Special Collections unit. You can limit your search to our holdings by clicking on "Special Collections" in the drop-down menu that is accessible from the search bar (the menu may not appear until you've pressed the search button).
  3. Peruse the information that comes up, recording the "call numbers" and titles of anything you wish to see during your appointment. The call number will either be a Library of Congress classification number (ex. TT500 .V714 for British Vogue) or a local archive number (ex. US.NNFIT.SC.214 for the Eleanor Lambert collection). For periodicals, we will also need to know what years you are interested in. 

If an in-depth description is not available for a given item or manuscript collection, or if you have any questions, please ask! We have many finding aids in progress and are happy to describe collections for you over the phone or through email.

For further information on locating primary sources we recommend Yale University's Primary Sources website, especially the Search Strategies section.