Collections
Library of Congress
The Library of Congress is the largest library in the world, with millions of books, films and video, audio recordings, photographs, newspapers, maps and manuscripts in its collections.
The materials in the Theodore Roosevelt Center’s collections come primarily from three divisions: Manuscript; Prints and Photographs; and Motion Picture, Broadcasting and Recorded Sound.
While the Manuscript Division contains the collections of many individuals relevant to Theodore Roosevelt’s life and world, the Theodore Roosevelt Center currently has focused on the Theodore Roosevelt Papers collection. With the first shipment of his papers coming from Roosevelt himself in 1919, other papers came from his office at the Metropolitan magazine, his friend and literary executor Joseph Bucklin Bishop, and other Roosevelt family members. The collection at this time consists of 485 digitized microfilm reels covering all periods of Roosevelt’s life, and consisting of approximately 276,000 documents.
To view items from the Manuscript Division, please click here.
The Prints and Photographs Division of the Library of Congress features various forms of still images, with the majority of holdings in the Theodore Roosevelt Center’s collections being photographs, stereographs, political cartoons, and magazine covers. Highlighted in this collection are materials from Roosevelt family albums, as well as an extensive collection of cartoons and covers from Puck magazine—a weekly periodical of the time highlighting humor, caricatures, and political satire.
To view items from the Prints and Photographs Division, please click here.
The Motion Picture, Broadcasting and Recorded Sound is the smallest of the three Library of Congress collections the Theodore Roosevelt Center has in its holdings. Drawing mainly from the Motion Picture arm of the division, it features many film clips from Roosevelt’s life, as well as memorial films made in the years after his death. It additionally contains several audio recordings of speeches Roosevelt gave during his 1912 Progressive Campaign.
To view items from the Motion Picture, Broadcasting and Recorded Sound Division, please click here.