Collections
Donate a Collection or Items of Archival MaterialWe will be happy to discuss with you potential gifts to collections or items of historical significance, to determine if they are an appropriate fit for the Center’s Collections.
Center for American History
The Center for American History is one of the nation’s premier historical research institutions. People come to the Center to study the outstanding collections that UT has assembled since its founding in 1883. As an organized research unit of The University of Texas at Austin, the Center facilitates, sponsors, and supports teaching, research, and public education in U.S. history. In support of its mission, CAH acquires, preserves, and makes available for research archival, artifact, and rare book collections and sponsors exhibitions, conferences, video documentaries, oral history projects, grant-funded research, and publications. The Center’s collecting scope spans the history of Texas, the history of the South, the Southwest, and the Rocky Mountain West; University of Texas history, Congressional history, and national-in-scope topics such as the history of the professional touring entertainment industry and media history, including broadcast news, photojournalism, and newspaper history.
The Center for American History’s five divisions—the Research and Collections Division located on the main UT campus in Austin; the Institute for Studies in American Military History; the Sam Rayburn Library and Museum in Bonham, Texas; the John Nance Garner Museum in Uvalde, Texas; and Winedale, a complex of historic structures and modern conference facilities located in rural Fayette County near Round Top, Texas—annually serve thousands of researchers, program participants, and visitors that include UT students, faculty, and staff, and the larger research community of students, scholars, and those committed to lifelong learning.
The Center seeks donations of appropriate research materials and direct financial support. The acquisition of new research materials through gift enables us to preserve our country’s valuable historical record and to offer new opportunities for research. Financial support insures preservation and access to Center collections, promotes Center collections through new technologies, exhibitions, public programs, publications, and brings Center collections to new audiences.
Information for Prospective Donors of Research Materials to the Center for American History
Many of the Center for American History’s extensive collections of books, manuscript and archival collections, sound recordings, artifacts, maps, photographs, and newspapers have been donated by generous individuals, families, or organizations who wished to help preserve and make publicly accessible the written, printed, oral, and visual history of their state, region, and nation.
The Center welcomes having the opportunity of acquiring additional appropriate historical materials to help build its collections. We invite prospective donors, both persons and organizations, to telephone the Center’s Office of the Director at 512/495-4515 to discuss our policies and procedures for donation.
For more information, see the Society of American Archivists’ "Guide to Donating Your Personal or Family Papers to a Repository" or continue reading for additional information with respect to the donating collections to the Center.
Types of Materials to Consider Donating
Donors often ask us what kinds of historical materials we wish to acquire. Examples of appropriate types are listed below. Please remember that the Center accepts only items that fall within its collecting scope, as described above. If you are in doubt about the suitability of your papers for donation, please telephone us—your "trash" may be our treasure!
Personal Papers:
Family letters
Diaries or journals
Passports, birth certificates, marriage records
Scrapbook materials, such as report cards, graduation certificates, programs, invitations, other documentary mementos, obituaries, newspaper clippings
Recorded or written oral history interviews or memoirs
Legal records, such as wills, estate materials, deeds, court records, contracts
Photographs and photo albums
Business Papers:
Correspondence
Ledgers or record books
Classified files
Financial records, such as receipts or invoices and inventories
Legal records, such as contracts, deeds, court records
Ephemera, such as flyers, calendars, schedules, posters, menus, business cards
Photographs or photo albums
Printed Materials:
Newspapers, books, pamphlets, posters, broadsides, and maps
Literary Productions/Writings:
Essays, poetry and fiction
Reminiscences or memoirs
Oral history interviews on cassette tape or narratives
Speeches
Organizational Records:
Charters, membership lists, minutes, yearbooks, programs, press releases
Correspondence
Newsletters or newspapers, brochures
Religious Materials:
Church, mosque, or synagogue records; programs, brochures, bulletins, record books
Prayer books, hymnbooks
Photographs or photo albums
Sound materials:
Music on disc, cassette tape, or as sheet music
Oral history interviews
Artistic materials:
Posters, drawings, photographs
Donating Collections: The Deed of Gift, Appraisals, Tax Deductions
Donors give materials to the Center using a Deed of Gift, a form which conveys ownership of the item(s) from the donor to The University of Texas at Austin, and by the physical transfer of the item(s) to the Center. The Deed of Gift form will be prepared by Center staff in consultation with the donor, and Center staff will facilitate the transfer of materials as needed.
Donors sometimes are eligible to take a tax deduction for the market value of the materials they donate, and the Center advises prospective donors to consult their attorney or tax advisor for information on the possible advantages of this form of charitable giving. The market value of gifted materials is best established by the donor hiring an outside, independent appraiser who will evaluate the collection to establish market value. Center staff cannot make this evaluation. The IRS requires this outside, independent appraisal if the appraised value of a gift is greater than $5,000. Additionally, the IRS requires that the University sign IRS Form 8283 acknowledging receipt of the gift. Your appraiser and the Center will assist you in managing this paperwork. To be acceptable to the IRS, the appraisal must be made no more than 60 days before the date of the contribution and before the due date of the tax return.
Center staff will be happy to assist donors in locating an appraiser and, if appropriate, the appraiser can conduct his evaluation on site at the Center.
Information for Prospective Donors of Financial Support to the Center for American History
Private financial support for the Center for American History is critical. As with the donation of historical collections, the gift of funds enables the Center to continue to offer new opportunities for research by building our collections; to insure the preservation and public access to our collections; and to promote our collections through new technologies, exhibitions, public programs, publications, and outreach to new audiences. Every gift to the Center for American History helps us achieve these fundraising priorities and the Center’s overall fundraising goal of $6,500,000. We invite you to telephone the Center’s Office of the Director at 512/495-4515 for additional information about our priorities and how you can help.
Our Priorities
Build our collections for research and preservation.
The Center’s vast and unique collections of books, personal papers, organizational records, maps, newspapers, photographs, artifacts, and recorded sound support the University’s curricula and serve a research community that ranges from the 7th-grade Texas student to the genealogist and the published scholar. Scholarly research at the Center annually contributes to dozens of master’s theses, Ph.D. dissertations, published articles and books, and documentary films, as well as to lifelong learning opportunities for thousands of citizens.
To continue to build our collections, we must be able to compete in a highly competitive market for nationally significant collections and to fund the physical transfer, organization, and preservation of collections offered as gifts. To achieve this goal, we seek private support for an endowment that will help fund acquisitions on specific historic topics, including Texas and Southern history, media, touring entertainment, and congressional history.
Foster an understanding of Texas history and culture through Winedale.
Winedale is a place rich in history, a unique cultural and historical resource where the past is still visible through outstanding examples of early Texas architecture and where public programs offer educational opportunities throughout the year. The legacy of Houston philanthropist Miss Ima Hogg, who donated the property to UT in 1967, Winedale contains nineteenth-century historic buildings, each of which offers a tangible link to our past through its architecture and period furnishings and the histories of its buildings, owners, and occupants.
Our goal is to expand the use of Winedale as a place for learning about Texas history and culture. Private support for Winedale in the areas of historic structures rehabilitation, new facilities construction, collection interpretation, educational programming, and natural resources management will help us achieve this goal.
Share our premier collections with people of Texas.
The Center for American History is committed to sharing its extraordinary historical resources with the people of Texas and the nation. Toward that end, we seek support for public programs, exhibitions, publications, touring presentations and displays, and other outreach activities that help bring people and their history together.
Provide training opportunities for students through internships and research support for students and scholars through travel grants and fellowships.
The Center is committed to offering hands-on training, mentoring, and examples of best-practice to UT students in appropriate academic fields through internships in its library, archival, museum, exhibition, and reference units. We are eager to extend support to students and scholars to travel to the Center to use our unique collections. We seek private support to fund UT-student internships and for travel grants and fellowships that will enable the brightest students and scholars in Texas and the nation to travel to Austin to use our collections.
Increase access to our research collections through new technologies.
Technology is essential to our goal of providing worldwide access to our unique collections. We seek resources to investigate, acquire, install, and implement technologies that will help bring people and our collections together, both locally and off-site.
Renovate the Center’s facilities in Sid Richardson Hall.
Our Research and Collections Division, located in Sid Richardson Hall 2, was built in 1970. Today, this facility needs renovation and retrofitting to meet the needs of increased research use and collection preservation and storage, and to take advantage of new technologies for collection access and resource sharing. Private support will help us renovate the division’s public research and reading room, exhibition space, staff work areas, and on-site storage areas.