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Formats - Archives & Manuscripts
The archival and manuscript collections available at the Center for American History's Research and Collections Division contain more than 80,000 linear feet and comprise more than 7,000 individual collections. These collections reflect the collecting scope of the Center, namely, the history of Texas, the Southwest, the South, and the Rocky Mountain West, the history of the University of Texas, congressional and political history, and specific national-in-scope topics, including media history and the history of the professional touring entertainment industry. (See collection strengths.) Archival and manuscript collections are stored in closed stacks and must be used in the James Stephen Hogg Reading Room, located in the Center’s Research and Collections Division housed in Sid Richardson Hall on the University of Texas at Austin campus.
The Center's collections offer research opportunities to a wide variety of users, including students, historians, genealogists, novelists, documentary film producers, and historic preservationists. The archival and manuscript collections contain the papers of individuals in many walks of life and of many ethnic identities and contain records of organization. Among these unique materials, produced over a span of nearly 300 years, are a wealth of diverse documents, which include these types:
- Personal and business correspondence
- Diaries, journals, and appointment books
- Passports, birth certificates, and marriage records
- Ledgers and account books
- Scrapbook materials, including report cards, graduation certificates, programs, invitations, many kinds of documentary mementos, obituaries, and newspaper clippings
- Family histories and narratives, as well as family trees and other genealogical information
- Personal and business legal records, including wills, probate and estate records, deeds, court documents, and contracts
- Classified files on thousands of subjects
- Both personal and business financial records, such as receipts, invoices, and inventories
- Organizational records, such as charters, membership lists, minutes, correspondence, yearbooks, programs, press releases, newsletters, brochures
- Artistic materials, such as posters and drawings
- Literary productions, including essays and speeches, reminiscences and memoirs, and poetry and fiction
A number of resources are available to guide researchers to archives and manuscript collections that may be relevant to their topic of interest, including:
This index provides subject and personal-name access to a select number of manuscript collections held at The Center for American History.
The online library catalog of the The University of Texas at Austin Libraries, with its multifaceted name, place, and topical subject access, contains descriptions of some archival and manuscript collections.
A steadily growing group of the Center's individual finding aids is available at the website of the consortium of manuscript repositories in the state.
Many of the guides include useful contextual information such as inclusive years, physical size, historical context, and collection strengths.
Finding aids to individual collections are available to researchers in several formats, each with varying degrees of detail:
- A growing number of the Center's finding aids are available at Texas Archival Resources Online (TARO)
- Some finding aids not available online can be attached to e-mail as text documents. Others may be available only in paper copy. Please contact the Center's reference desk for more information.
- All finding aids are available for examination onsite in the Hogg Reading Room.