Columnist Susan Snyder: Let your curiosity take the Lied

Monday, March 28, 2005 | 8:16 a.m.

One of the busier spots on UNLV's campus is also among its quieter.

The Lied Library's special collections department is ground zero for the Las Vegas Centennial celebrations and exhibits, containing information on everything from railroad and mining history to showgirls, casino openings and entertainers.

"Everything there is to know about Las Vegas, is here," said Jonnie Kennedy, who works the information desk inside the third-floor repository.

This no-cell phone, pencils-only zone has been inundated with requests for photographs, documents and even casino-opening promotions materials from the city's 100-year past, she said.

The collection has what is perhaps the world's most extensive history of gambling, with books dating back to the 16th century and dozens of volumes on such games as whist and bridge. Everything from how to play the games to how to run a casino to the gaming industry's sociological impacts is contained here.

And if physically getting out of the Las Vegas Valley is beyond your ken, it's easy to take a mental vacation and trek through time among the collection's documents, letters, books and photos.

"You get to looking at the pictures and reading the letters, and you have to set yourself a time limit. Otherwise, you'll be there forever," Su Kim Chung, special collections archivist, said.

A person could disappear for hours in the 1980s grassroots efforts to block the MX missile project. One can read testimony Shelly Bristol made to state legislators about the importance of universal HIV testing in Nevada brothels or peruse the files of Willam Hannah, Howard Hughes' public relations director.

Martha Dicey, who works for a local environmental assessment firm, was looking at the industrial histories on two sites in Summerlin and one in Henderson and also training a couple of new researchers.

They culled information from old aerial photos and and city directories that date to the 1950s.

"A bank doesn't want to buy into a Superfund site or a Love Canal," Dicey said. "UNLV is our only source for Las Vegas historic information."

She visits the collections once or twice a week and concedes that it's easy to get lost in the searching. A resident since 1988, Dicey said it's interesting to see the changes on paper.

"It's neat, since I've lived here so long," she said. "I wonder who owned my parents' house way back when. It's easy to get sidetracked, but in the back of my mind I've got, 'budget, budget, budget.' "

Her employer's, that is. And she went back to work.

There are a few rules. First, you sign in and give a general idea of what you're interested in. The workers will help find specific topic areas and retrieve files. Photocopies of photographs contained in large books are good enough for the average curiosity-seeker. But patrons can see actual photos on request.

Only pencils are allowed, as ink is permanent. And people may have to wear white cloth gloves to handle some files and photos.

But it's an easy way to travel. The collections are the only way to visit a Mormon settlement Daniel Bonelli founded around 1865 at the direction of Brigham Young. "Bonelli's Landing" was officially named Rioville.

And today, Rioville lies beneath Lake Mead.