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
Enoch Pratt Free Library, Baltimore
Archaeological Society of Maryland, Inc
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Moorland-Spingarn Resource Center, Howard University: one of the largest repositories of African American historical documents in the area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
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.