Rice University Fondren Library

Image: Anne & Whitley Strieber Collection 1970-2016

Description of your institution:

Name of institution: Rice University Fondren Library
Mailing address: 6100 Main St. Houston, TX 77005 USA
Email address: ask@rice.libanswers.com
Website: library.rice.edu

Description of how and when your institution started acquiring archival, library or artifact collections relating to parapsychology:

In the summer and fall of 2015, Jeffrey Kripal, the J. Newton Rayzor Chair in Philosophy and Religious Thought at Rice University, held a series of meetings with subject and special collections librarians to discuss the creation of a paranormal studies collection at the Fondren Library. These conversations touched on both general collections and on soliciting donations of archival materials.

Following these initial contacts, the Woodson Research Center (special collections) at the Fondren Library began accepting archives from a number of prominent actors in UFO and abduction studies. Later on, in order to highlight the collection’s focus on supporting research by the scholars connected with the Religious Studies department’s Gnosticism, Esotericism, and Mysticism (GEM) certificate program, it received the name “GEM Archives”.

Fondren Library has also made efforts to build up its general collections holdings on ufology and other aspects of the paranormal, by purchasing both current and out-of-print books and accepting the donation of a scholar’s library.

Your main collections in the field, including the names of prominent creators:

• Jacques F.Vallee –UFOlogist, computer scientist, venture capitalist.
• Whitley Strieber – author of the Communion books detailing his abduction experiences, and his wife and co-author, Anne Strieber.
• Edwin May – research director at Pentagon’s Star Gate project that focused on ESP research.
• Richard Haines – founder of National Aviation Reporting Center on Anomalous Phenomena (NARCAP).
• Brenda Denzler – anthropologist and scholar of the paranormal (books and some archival materials).
• Jeffrey Kripal Academic Papers, 1970-2015
• A full run of Fate magazine.

Your collections page relating to parapsychology holdings:

http://libguides.rice.edu/paranormal

Finding aids for your main parapsychology collections:

http://www.jacquesvallee.net/

http://www.strieber.com/

http://narcap.org/

Published works created using your parapsychology collections, including books, plays, artwork, both non-fiction and fiction:

Since we only started building the collection two and a half years ago, a lot of our materials are still in process and unavailable for research. The exception to this is the Strieber collection that has been fully processed and was the basis for at least one conference presentation (by a graduate student in the department of Religious studies).