We moved into a new building in 1993 with a storage capacity of 80,000 cubic feet. We're adding about 1,500 cubic feet in collections every year, and we will soon have to find off-site storage. Ken Burns, documentary film maker, is a patron of the American Heritage Center where he has researched his films. Requests come in by phone, fax, mail and e-mail, and the reference staff responds by fax and mail. Many are for copies of old photographs.
Nothing is loaned out.
Materials, however, often are in exhibits displayed in the center or loaned to other libraries. AHC staff does a lot of outreach to promote its collections, including training, publishing a newsletter and sponsoring annual symposiums. This year's symposium's guest lecturer is David Brown, producer of The Sound of Music, Patton and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. The online catalog is a fairly recent addition and includes only about 20 percent of the rare book collection and 25 percent of the manuscripts. The remaining materials are gradually being processed.