The Visual Resources Center's primary collection is our teaching collection of over 200,000 35mm slides and over 80,000 digital images. A majority of the digital images we hold are versions of our 35mm slides, although a growing number are born-digital and have no analog counterpart. The teaching collection is accessed primarily through the SPIRO database, which serves as a visual catalog to the slide collection as well as a portal for finding digital images. A subset of our digital collection is also available via the ARTstor digital image database.The 35mm slide collection is fully classified.

Beyond the teaching collection, the Visual Resources Center holds many smaller, more specialized image collections. These collections vary in format and origin, but are mostly collections of teaching or research photographs by current or former faculty of the college of environmental design.  Some of these collections are partially represented in the main teaching collection, although most are not integrated. Most have separate indexes or finding aids to facilitate access. Some of these collections are listed in the main catalog of the UC Berkeley Library on a collection level.

These collections include:

    Joseph Esherick Architecture Slide Collection 

    Raymond Lifchez Architecture Slide Collection

    Harold Stump World Architecture Collection

    Denise Scott Brown Teaching collection

   Walter Stileberg slide collection

    Herwin Schaefer design History slide collection