Special Collections and University Archives is open Monday-Friday from 8am-5pm and by appointment (contact us at specref@vt.edu to schedule). Reference services available in person, and via telephone and email. Our materials do not circulate, but we offer some photocopy and scanning services for researchers unable to visit us and for those on-site.

All books and publications are listed in the library's catalog. Brief descriptions of manuscript collections are in the catalog; full descriptive finding aids are available through the Virginia Heritage consortium (http://ead.lib.virginia.edu/vivaxtf/search).

The History of Food and drink collecting area has over 4,500 publications in Special Collection Rare Book Collection and University Archives' and more than 1,300 in the circulating library collection spanning over 300 years. Emphasis on: recipes/cookbooks; nutrition/dietetics; children's cooking/nutrition; household management and home remedies; food processing/technology; domestic science/social/economic history; cocktail history. Digitized items from the Rare Book collection are available online: http://digitalsc.lib.vt.edu/HFDBooks; digitized items from manuscript collections are available online: http://digitalsc.lib.vt.edu/HFDMss. Over 100 manuscript collections, especially handwritten receipt books (some which include home remedies); faculty papers; and food-related pamphlets. Some photographs, particularly those that relate to the history of domestic sciences at Virginia Tech and the Virginia Cooperative Extension.