Stanford Libraries presents Spotlight on Special Collections, on view in the Peterson Gallery and Munger Rotunda from May 15 to August 31, 2025.  

Spotlight Exhibits is an open-source digital exhibit platform developed and maintained by Stanford’s Digital Library Systems and Services department (DLSS). Eleven years since its inception, the site hosts 164 online exhibits that span the range of Stanford’s general and special collections and cover such diverse topics as Ancient, Medieval, and Early Modern Manuscripts, Philip Zimbardo’s Stanford Prison Experiment, Sunset Magazine, the Gardiner Transit Collection, and the photography archives of Bob Fitch, David Bacon, and Douglas Menuez.  Created by Stanford librarians, faculty, and students, and arranged and described in narrative format, the site’s digital content is accessed thousands of times a day. It helps make the libraries’ collections accessible to a vast audience of researchers at Stanford and beyond.  DLSS continues to add functionality, including the display of streaming media. 

This exhibition, Spotlight on Special Collections, invites viewers into the deep collections that underlie or form the basis for the digital exhibits by presenting original artifacts, books, and manuscripts represented on the platform. Library curators selected from the approximately 100 Spotlight exhibits that feature Special Collections and University Archives content to show in the galleries. Original objects on display include historical photographs, books, illuminated manuscripts, early printed documents, musical scores, objects related to Stanford’s history, and ephemera representing movements for social change. 

No single exhibition could capture the full range and diversity of the content available on the Spotlight platform. However, with this exhibition, we have endeavored to represent the depth and breadth of this rich resource as it pertains to our Special Collections and University Archives holdings. 

This exhibition is curated by Benjamin Lee Stone with Rebecca Wingfield and Franz Kunst, Benjamin Albritton, Ray Heigemeir, Josh Schneider, with Connor Yankowitz, Kathleen Smith, Charlotte Kwok-Glasser, and Natalie Marine-Street; produced by Deardra Fuzzell with assistance from Elizabeth Fischbach and Connor Yankowitz.