Archives & Special Collections at Pitt

🌈Happy LGBTQIA+ Pride Month!🌈 As celebrations continue throughout Pittsburgh this year, we are looking back at Gay Pride Week in 1974.

Before digital platforms, the Pittsburgh Gay News (published by Gay Alternatives Pittsburgh or GAP) kept the community informed and engaged. This issue from March 1947 shares the planning process for possible pride events that year, including a march, picnic, trolley party, a "gay-in" at Point Park, and more!

Want to learn more about q***r publications in our holdings? Visit our guide: https://pitt.libguides.com/undergroundpress/gaypress

All are welcome to make an appointment to see any issues in person at one of our reading rooms! 📚

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Joe Negri, who passed away this past weekend, was so much more than Mr. Roger’s “Handy Man” Negri. He was also a talented jazz musician, an award-winning music teacher, and a prolific composer who wrote, among other things, the original Pittsburgh Pirates song, “Beat ‘em Bucs.” The University of Pittsburgh Library System is honored to be the home of the Joe Negri Collection, which documents his career from his beginnings as a child star in vaudeville to the present.

Learn more about Joe Negri and the Joe Negri Collection in the collection guide: https://bit.ly/3RYwUol

🎉Congratulations to horror writer Dan Kraus, winner of the 2026 Pulitzer Prize in Fiction for his novel Angel Down!🎉You can check out the Daniel Kraus Papers at the University of Pittsburgh Library System to learn more about Kraus’ career as a novelist as well as his early childhood fiction, with manuscripts of published novels and notebooks of unpublished juvenilia. View the collection guide: https://digital.library.pitt.edu/islandora/object/pitt%3AUS-PPiU-SC202001/viewer

This image features short stories and school work created by Dan Kraus in high school- all part of the Daniel Kraus Papers.

Taking pictures in front of the Cathedral of Learning's fountain is a graduation week tradition! Enjoy these pre-smartphone era "selfies" of University of Pittsburgh students posed there (from the 1979 The Owl Yearbook) and congratulations to the class of 2026!! 📸🎓

🎉Happy Birthday, August Wilson! The legendary Pittsburgh-born playwright and poet would have been 81 today.🎉

This portrait photograph and birthday card are part of the August Wilson Archive at the University of Pittsburgh Library System. The birthday card was given to Wilson by the Broadway cast of Fences in 1987! If you look closely, you can see well-wishes from actors like James Earl Jones (who played Troy), Courtney B. Vance (who played Corey), and Charles Brown (who played Lyons).

You can learn more about Wilson's Archive by visiting https://augustwilson.library.pitt.edu/.

Over the course of the Spring semester, eleven University of Pittsburgh undergraduate students have been following their curiosity in Archives & Special Collections and the Frick Fine Arts Library. Hear their stories this Friday, 4/17, during Archival Scholars in Conversation! 📣

The Archival Scholars Research Award is a partnership between the University of Pittsburgh Library System and the Office of the Undergraduate Research, Scholarship, and Creative Activity.

The 2026 ASRA cohort researched horror film scripts, early printed books like the Nuremberg Chronicle, feminist periodicals, Latin Hippocratic texts, children's literature, the history of mental health care institutions, and more!

Nerdy about 16th-century astronomy books or maybe you love to read your daily horoscope? Learn more about the histories of all things astronomy next week at the University of Pittsburgh Library System! We've got a stellar line-up of makerspace activities, faculty talks, exhibits, and more. To learn more or register for events, visit: https://library.pitt.edu/origins 🔗💫

More opportunities to celebrate archives with the University of Pittsburgh Library System's Archives & Special Collections this month!

📆Friday 3/27, 11-11:30 AM, Hyland Gallery Talk: Chūshingura 忠臣蔵：Musha-e 武者絵 and Kabuki-e 歌舞伎絵 with Hiroyuki Good, Japanese and Koren Studies Librarian
Location: Hillman Library, 3rd Floor, Hyland Gallery
More information: https://pitt.libcal.com/event/16592336

Learn about the famous Japanese story of the Akō Incident (1701–1703) through a series of hand-made 19th-century Japanese woodblock prints from the Barry Rosensteel Japanese Print Collection.

📆Tuesday, March 31, 4-5:30 PM, The Archive I'm In: Celebrating Award-Winning Author Sharon G. Flake
Location: Hillman Library, 3rd floor, Archives & Special Collections Instruction Room 340
More information and registration: https://pitt.libcal.com/event/16318739

Celebrate with us as we mark the opening of the Sharon G. Flake Papers (Sharon Flake) at the University of Pittsburgh Library System! Flake, a renowned author whose writing focuses on Black life and experience, will be joined by Curator Clare Withers, children's literature scholars, educators, and student researchers.

The Nationality Rooms in the are some of the most iconic spaces on the University of Pittsburgh's Oakland campus. Have you ever wondered how they got created and why they look the way they do? Join us in the Hyland Gallery (3rd floor, Hillman Library) this week for gallery talks that explore the histories of the Italian and French rooms through objects in the University of Pittsburgh Library System's University Archives.

More information at the links below:
3/18, 12-12:45 pm, Dr. Lina Insana, Pitt Italian Program | https://pitt.libcal.com/event/16032142?hs=a

3/19, 11-1145 am, Joanna Conings, PhD candidate, French Program at Pitt | https://pitt.libcal.com/event/16032544?hs=a

Be sure to check out other events celebrating 100 Years of the Nationality Rooms and Intercultural Exchange Programs: https://www.nationalityrooms.pitt.edu/events/upcoming!🎉

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Happy book lovers! We could get lost in these marbled edges, which decorate twenty volumes of La sainte bible : avec des explications & reflexions qui regardent la vie interieure by Jeanne Marie Bouvier de la Motte Guyon, 1790 (Call Number: PQ1799 .G8 S2 1790) in the University of Pittsburgh Library System's rare book holdings.