CENTER FOR AMERICAN HISTORY. The Center for American History at the University of Texas at Austin is a special collections library, archive, and museum that facilitates research and sponsors programs on the historical development of the United States. The center was established in December 1991 as a unit in the university's General Libraries to consolidate and make more visible the university's extensive holdings documenting the historical development of the United States. In August 1994 the Center for American History was made an independent operating unit in the university. The center's divisions are the Eugene C. Barker Texas History Collections, the Littlefield Southern History Collections, the Congressional History Collections, the Sam Rayburn Library and Museum (located in Bonham, Texas), the Winedale Historical Center (located near Round Top, Texas), the Western Americana Collections, the Special Collections for American History, the University of Texas Archives, and the Oral History Program. Its research-collection strengths are the history of Texas, the South, the Southwest, the Rocky Mountain West, congressional history, and specific national topics. In 1995 the center director was Don E. Carleton. The center supports research and education by acquiring, preserving, and making accessible research collections and by sponsoring exhibitions, conferences, symposia, oral history projects, publications, fellowships, and grant-funded initiatives. The center, with the exception of its Winedale Historical Center and its Sam Rayburn Library and Museum, is located in Sid Richardson Hall on the University of Texas at Austin campus, adjacent to the Lyndon Baines Johnson Library^qv. See also BARKER TEXAS HISTORY CENTER.

Katherine J. Adams