Arms of a woman bathing a baby in a stainless steel sink. 

Bathing baby in sink, Montague Farm Commune, April 1971

Now open by appointment

SCUA is open to UMass Amherst students, faculty, and staff (with a valid UCard) by appointment only, as of August 25th. The Du Bois Library remains closed to all other visitors. You can book an appointment on our appointment page.

In order to mitigate the spread of COVID-19, we are doing the following:

  • Face coverings are required at all times inside the Du Bois Library and in the SCUA reading room.
  • All researchers will wash their hands with soap and water before using collections.
  • Hand sanitizer may damage archival material; please refrain from using it immediately before handling collections.
  • Only one researcher per appointment is permitted. Researchers will be separated by at least 6 feet of space and will not share tables.
  • Surfaces and other high-touch areas will be cleaned by staff between appointments.
  • All collections will be quarantined for 72 hours after use. This may affect availability of materials.

We are still available remotely to all researchers and will continue to provide these services:.

Research and permissions requests

SCUA will continue to monitor our main email address, scua@library.umass.edu, and we will do our best to respond to all requests within two business days.

We will have a reduced staff onsite during the Fall semester and will be able to fulfill copy requests on a limited basis. Requests will be fulfilled in the order they are received. Depending on the nature of the copies requested, we might not be able to make as many copies per researcher as we typically can. For more information about our copy policy, visit our copy requests page

Class visits

Although we cannot host classes in person, there are many ways we can support courses that had planned to visit SCUA as part of their syllabus. For more information, visit our Teach & Learn page, or email us at scua@library.umass.edu

Online resources