Students at the University of Maryland, College Park,
have at their disposal a wide-ranging variety of research resources both
on campus and beyond. The Washington-Baltimore Metropolitan Area offers
access to research materials, collections, and facilities of unparalleled
merit and international repute. The following is a description of many of the resources most relevant to graduate students in American Studies. For more direct links to on- and off-campus resources, please see our menu bar on the left hand side of this and all pages of the American Studies Web site.
Off-Campus Research Resources
Library
of Congress: Internationally renowned for its extensive
collections, including collections of printed materials, prints, maps,
photographs, sound recordings and film.
National
Archives and Records Administration: NARA houses collections
at various sites around the Metro-Washington D.C area, and includes
the recently opened state-of-the-art research facility, Archives II,
in College Park, just minutes from the UMCP campus.
Smithsonian
Institution Libraries: Includes those of the African Art
Museum; National Gallery of Art; National Museum of American History,
which includes the Office of American Folklife; the National Portrait
Gallery; and the National Museum of American Art's Archives of American
Art, the world's largest repository for primary source material documenting
the history of the visual arts in the United States.
Other Area Resources
American Institute of Architects
National Building Museum, Archives and Collections
Annapolis Hall of Records
Enoch Pratt Free Library, Baltimore;
Maryland Archives
Maryland Historical Society
Archaeological Society of Maryland, Inc
Maryland Historical Trust
Merrill Learning Center and
Deaf Archives, Galludet University
Moorland-Spingarn Resource Center, Howard University: one of the largest repositories of African American historical documents in the area
The Martin Luther King Jr. Library
University of Virginia collections
The US Center of Military History
US Government Libraries, including those of the
federal departments of Labor, Housing and Urban Development,
Commerce, and
Interior
US Holocaust Memorial Museum
The Historical Society of Washington, D.C.
The Freedom Forum (Arlington, VA)
Campus Resources
The Libraries on the College Park campus, consisting
of the Theodore H. McKeldin library and six branch libraries, contain
over 2.2 million volumes and subscribe to about 20,000 periodicals and
newspapers. Additional collections of research materials are available
on microfilm, microfiche, phonograph records, tapes, films, and in electronic
formats. Research at College Park is supported by a variety of technological
tools. An online catalog identifies library materials from the collections
of libraries on all campuses of the University of Maryland system. It
provides access to information about articles in over 100,000 journals
and through the fee-based CARS system for accessing hundreds of remote
databases, as well as through the free use of over 60 automated reference
tools in the library. Extensive inter-library loan services are available
to obtain loans or photocopies of materials from other libraries not
available at College Park.
Libraries
and Collections at UMCP
Architecture Library; Art Library; Broadcast Pioneers
and Public Broadcasting Collections; Maryland Room; Non Print Media
Library; Performing Arts Library; and the National Trust for Historic
Preservation Library, the largest preservation library in the United
States.
Other Resources at UMCP
Our connections with a wide variety of faculty from
departments across campus offer American Studies students a chance to
take part in projects, such as the Consortium
on Race, Gender, and Ethnicity (CRGE), the Maryland
Institute for Technology in the Humanities (MITH), and the Center for Heritage Resource Studies, attend joint-sponsored
lecture series and polyseminars, and engage in a dialogue with the broader
community of Americanists on campus.
