American Heritage Center

This year, the AHC is raising money for the following three projects:

1. Internships for UW students, which are invaluable learning opportunities. Each internship costs $2,500 for one intern for one semester. They can be used in any area of activity at the AHC and are often designated for special projects in collection management, processing for public access, or outreach and marketing.
2. Wyoming History Day grants for K–12 schools and school districts. These will be $1,000 grants that will support student research and project preparation for the History Day competition, as well as transportation, food, and lodging for travel to the state competition.
3. The AHC general fund to support AHC exhibits, outreach, and collecting. This vital area allows us to not only fill in the gaps but to launch new initiatives.

The American Heritage Center is a jewel in the University of Wyoming crown. Its award-winning building houses one of the nation's largest and most respected manuscript and rare book archives. We hold over 93,000 cubic feet of collections—from papers and photographs to audio and video recordings and artwork, to say nothing of the entire range of modern digital production. 

Our primary emphasis begins with Wyoming and the West, and our collections preserve the history of ranching, mining, and energy development; land use, environmentalism, and outdoor sports and recreation; railroad, highway, and air transportation; and the role all of these play in the economic booms and busts to which this region is so prone. Since Wyoming was the first place in the world where women were given the right to vote—half a century before the nation as a whole—we hold significant collections on women's role in suffrage and governance. 

The AHC also has nationally important collections in arts and entertainment, politics, and journalism, as well as military history and popular culture. Superman, Spiderman and the Marvel Universe live here in the collections of Mort Weisinger and Stan Lee. The collections of Jack Benny, Bob Hope, Barbara Stanwick, and Buddy Ebsen also reside here. All of these are public and available to any researcher. 

The center's dedicated staff serve nearly 4,000 users each year, who range from students working on Wyoming History Day projects to classes engaging with unique primary resources to some of the top scholars from across the globe. Support for the American Heritage Center funds a range of activities—all of which are necessary for the acquisition of new collections, the care of all materials stored here, and the ongoing task of making the archives available to citizens and scholars in Wyoming, the nation, and the world. 

For decades, our patrons have come to our state-of-the-art reading room to peruse our collection. But over the last two years, we have developed a Virtual Reading Room, where the center uses digital means to replicate the services typically performed in the reading room, making them available to people who cannot travel to Laramie. Our RRAD program (Remote Research and Discovery) enables scholars around the world to go beyond making copies of collection material and to explore it in real time with the assistance of Zoom technology and a research assistant. 

Donations this year will go to support the ways the many ways that we reach out and serve our patrons, whether they are able to come work in our reading rooms or not. 

If you have any questions, do not hesitate to contact Tyler Spear, Director of Development for the American Heritage Center, at (307) 766- 3901 or speart@uwyo.edu. 

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