American Heritage Center: World Class Research Facility

American Heritage Center: World Class Research Facility

By Mark Greene, director

Sept. 2, 2004 -- That black cone-shaped building near the University of Wyoming football stadium and basketball arena houses the American Heritage Center, UW's archives, rare books, and manuscripts repository.

Many universities have special collections, but very few have special collections as extensive and significant as those in the AHC. And while some university special collections are restricted to "qualified scholars," the AHC welcomes citizens, students, and scholars.

Not planning to major in history? In a typical year students taking courses in 14 departments- and four colleges conduct research at the American Heritage Center.

AHC collections go beyond Wyoming's or the region's borders and support a wide range of research and teaching activities in the humanities, sciences, arts, business, and education. Major areas of collecting include Wyoming and the American West, the mining and petroleum industries, U.S. politics and world affairs, environment and natural resources, journalism, transportation, the history of books, and 20th century entertainment such as popular music, radio, television, and film. The collections are not only diverse, they are immense--laid end to end the collections would stretch more than 18 miles.

Undergraduates, graduate students, and faculty do research at the AHC alongside avocational researchers, high school students, documentary film producers, and prominent scholars. All of them work with collections of international importance -- in a given year scholars and other researchers come from 48 states and more than a dozen nations (recently including Australia, Germany, Botswana, Brazil and Russia).

Some specifics: The Toppan Rare Books Library at the AHC holds more than 40,000 volumes, all of them accessible for research by UW students. Collection strengths include the American West, British and American Literature, Early Exploration, Religion, Hunting and Fishing, and examples of the book arts. Examples range from a papyrus fragment from an Egyptian Book of the Dead, Renaissance books from the press of Aldus Manutius in Venice, 17th century Puritan books printed and published by London women, and a fishing book with actual tied flies that are 100 years old.

The AHC's Alan K. Simpson Institute for Western Politics and Leadership acquires, catalogs, and makes accessible for research the sometimes vast collections of Wyoming political figures. These collections include the papers of Wyoming's first U.S. senator, F. E. Warren, the state's and nation's first elected woman governor, Nellie Tayloe Ross, governor and U.S. Sen. Milward Simpson and his two sons-state legislator Pete Simpson and U.S. Senator Alan Simpson. Al Simpson's papers total about 600 cubic feet, slightly smaller than average for his length of service.

The AHC is one of four major archives outside of California and New York that hold significant collections on the history of film, radio, and television (the others are at Boston University, Wisconsin Historical Society, and University of Texas-Austin). One particular concentration at the AHC relates to the portrayal of the American West in the popular media-so we have the papers, for example, of William Boyd, who was revered by children in the 1940s and 1950s as Hopalong Cassidy. We also have strong collections relating to Western writers, starting with Owen Wister, credited with "inventing" the modern image of the West.

Many UW courses include an orientation visit to the AHC. If you'd like to visit our "cone on the range" without such a class connection, please do. Appointments are not necessary to do research in the AHC collections. If it's your first time you might want to call ahead to make an appointment with one of our reference archivists, who can introduce you to our collections and procedures, and can work with you to identify or refine a research topic.

The AHC is a world-class research center with the top priority of enriching the education of UW students. Please stop by and visit us.

Posted on Thursday, September 02, 2004