UNLV Special Collections serves a wide audience and has provided research material and photographs for numerous books, documentaries, magazine and newspaper articles on Las Vegas history over the past forty years.  Researchers have included historians, archaeologists, geologists, journalists, documentary filmmakers, graduate students, and government officials to name a few.

A selection of books that have used our resources include: 

• Las Vegas: As It Began As It Grew
• Resort City in the Sunbelt
• Viva Las Vegas: After Hours Architecture
• Neon Metropolis: How Las Vegas Started the 21st Century
• Suburban Xanadu: the Casino Resort on the Las Vegas Strip and Beyond
• Young Las Vegas: 1905-1931: before the Future Found Us
• Las Vegas Then and Now 
• The Best City of Them All: A History of Las Vegas 1930-1960
• The University of Nevada, Las Vegas: A History
• Las Vegas: A Centennial History
• and many others. 

Local, state, and federal government reports on various aspects of the southern Nevada landscape have also benefited greatly from the resources held in Special Collections.

Many film and television documentaries on Las Vegas have utilized our vast pictorial resources.  These include the recent PBS documentary – Las Vegas: An Unconventional History; The Real Las Vegas; the Bravo Channel’s recent documentary on Las Vegas entertainment; and several shows on E! Entertainment that have focused on various members of the Rat Pack.

Local newspapers and magazines such as the Las Vegas Review Journal, the Las Vegas
Sun and Las Vegas Life also regularly use photographs from our vast collection.

40th Anniversary Home | A Brief History