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Southwest Florida (SWFL) has a unique environmental ecosystem consisting of preserves, sanctuaries, swamps, estuaries, and coastlines. The Southwest Florida Regional Planning Council Collection offers an extensive array of documents, reports, maps, and materials documenting the development and conservation of the SWFL region from the Southwest Florida Regional Planning Council.

The collection was given by Reubin O'Donovan Askew in 2008. It contains materials related to his time serving in the Florida House of Representatives, Florida State Senate, and as Governor of Florida.  Included in the collection are campaign files, correspondence, newspaper articles, photographs, audiovisual materials, memorabilia, and copies of speeches. Additionally, there are records documenting his 1988 Presidential bid, as well as other materials relating to his life after his service as a Florida public official. Also included in the collection are the personal papers of his wife, Donna Lou Harper Askew.

The Elliot Cross and James A. Cross Civil War Collection documents the Southern perspective of the American Civil War. As FAU's largest collection dedicated solely to the Civil War, the Cross collection contains hundreds of manuscript and published items including personal correspondence from Jefferson Davis, Alexander Stephens, Robert E. Lee and many other Confederate military and government leaders. Also included are Confederate government documents and general orders pertaining to the war as well as photographs and illustrations from the period. The Cross Collection was donated by Elliot Cross' son James A. Cross in the early 1970s, following his father's death. Elliot Cross, a life-long aficionado of the Confederacy, purchased papers, lithographs and prints, currency, published and unpublished letters and memorabilia over a period of forty years. FAU Libraries received the collection mounted in four custom-made maroon leather scrapbooks. The items have been removed from these scrapbooks for preservation purposes. The publication of several articles about the collection in 1988 led to research by Civil War scholars that culminated in ground-breaking publication. One such breakthrough identified pneumonia as T. J. "Stonewall" Jackson's cause of death; a thesis supported by documents in the Cross Collection and published in Robert K. Krick's, The Smoothbore Volley that Doomed the Confederacy: the Death of Stonewall Jackson and other Chapters on the Army of Northern Virginia. (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2002).

The Florida State University (FSU) Media Relations files contain press releases, photos, programs, brochures, newspapers, newsletters and letters documenting the activities of the Appleton Museum of Art, Asolo Theatre, the College of Business, the FSU Circus, Graduation, Homecoming, and the School of Theatre.

The files in this collection were generated by the college and include built structures as well as some physical features (gardens and monuments) on property related to the Lakeland campus after 1922. Additionally, there are some files about property owned or formerly owned by FSC that is not part of the main campus in Lakeland.

Photographs taken from from the African American Achievers Awards and 100 Black Men National Convention

This collection relates to Staff Sergeant Philip Sperling who served with Headquarters Detachment, 325th Medical Battalion, which was assigned to the 100th Infantry Division during World War II. The collections primarily contain letters. Also included in the collection is currency, postcards, newspaper clippings, photographs, artifacts, and souvenirs. The collection also includes his government correspondence before and after his discharge from the Army.