Special Collections Division

Located in the heart of Music City, the Main Nashville Public Library boasts 4 million visits annually and maintains a collection of 2 million items. The Special Collections Division features dedicated spaces for teaching about the city's Civil Rights history and Tennessee's deciding role in the passage of the 19th Amendment. Special Collections holdings include books about Civil Rights, Women's rights, genealogy, Tennessee history, and Southern and political history, as well as a section devoted to Nashville-based authors. In addition to books, Special Collections holds over 1000 oral histories recorded from 1978 to 2010; numerous manuscript, photograph, and map collections; and the Nashville Banner collection, documenting Nashville during the latter half of the 20th century through newspaper photographs and clippings files.