The Alexander Architectural Archives, part of the Architecture & Planning Library, has over 140 collections of material preserved to enrich and serve our architectural heritage. Holdings include any type of document involved in the management of a firm, the development of a design through the finished product, and the reflection of lives of architects, landscape architects, planners, designers, preservationists, historians, professors, and businesses in the industry. Search the AAA's finding aids via Texas Archival Resources Online (TARO).
The Architecture and Planning Library's Special Collections include 20,000 works of rare and unique materials, including libraries of the Paul Cret, Charles Moore, and Colin Rowe. Additionally, the library holds microfiche collections of early architectural texts.
The Briscoe Center for American History’s archival, artifact, and library collections contain historical treasures documenting key themes in Texas and U.S. history.
The LLILAS Benson: Latin American Studies and Collections' holdings include nearly a million books, magazines, newspapers, journals and other materials. This collection is complemented by a world-class archival collection containing manuscripts, art, maps, letters and other one-of-a-kind materials. The collection is continually enriched by a vigorous acquisitions program and by a growing collection of original digital resources available online.
The Ransom Center is an internationally renowned humanities research library and museum at The University of Texas at Austin. Its extensive collections provide unique insight into the creative process of writers and artists, deepening our understanding and appreciation of literature, photography, film, art, and the performing arts.
Looking for primary and archival material beyond UT? Check out these resources:
ArchiveGridThis link opens in a new windowDates of coverage vary. Unlimited users.
ArchiveGrid includes over four million records describing archival materials, bringing together information about historical documents, personal papers, family histories, and more. With over 1,000 different archival institutions represented, it helps researchers looking for primary source materials held in archives, libraries, museums and historical societies.
The Digital Public Library of America (DPLA) contains metadata records —information describing an item —for millions of photographs, manuscripts, books, sounds, moving images, and more from libraries, archives, and museums around the United States. Each record links to the original object on the content provider’s website. The DPLA brings together the riches of America’s libraries, archives, and museums, and makes them freely available to the world. It strives to contain the full breadth of human expression, from the written word, to works of art and culture, to records of America’s heritage, to the efforts and data of science. The DPLA aims to expand this crucial realm of openly available materials, and make those riches more easily discovered and more widely usable and used.
A collection of large-scale, detailed maps from 1867-1970 depicting the commercial, industrial, and residential sections of more than 12,000 U.S. towns and cities.
The available states on our site are: Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia.
HathiTrust is a large digital library bringing together materials from sources including Google Books, the Internet Archive, libraries at HathiTrust partner institutions, and other commercial digitization projects. Search more than 11 million volumes with more than a third of these available for full text access and download (primarily books and journals published before 1923 and U.S. Government publications).
University of Texas students, faculty, and staff can download materials in the public domain in addition to conducting full text searches of all materials in the HathiTrust Catalog. UT Official Retirees and UT Extension Students are excluded from this access because of HathiTrust's strict definitions and added layer of authentication
Click the "Log In" button and choose "University of Texas at Austin" from the drop-down menu. Select "continue" and then enter your EID and password when prompted.
The HathiTrust is a partnership of more than 80 major academic and research libraries.
Updated regularly. The Historic American Buildings Survey (HABS) and the Historic American Engineering Record (HAER) collections are among the largest and most heavily used in the Prints and Photographs Division of the Library of Congress. Since 2000, documentation from the Historic American Landscapes Survey (HALS) has been added to the holdings. The collections document achievements in architecture, engineering, and landscape design in the United States and its territories through a comprehensive range of building types, engineering technologies, and landscapes. This online presentation of the HABS/HAER/HALS collections includes digitized images of measured drawings, black-and-white photographs, color transparencies, photo captions, written history pages, and supplemental materials.
A list of archival collections related to landscape architecture maintained by Library & Research Services at the American Society of Landscape Architects to guide researchers, members, and the public to primary sources at other institutions.
Provides descriptions of the rich archival, manuscript, and museum collections in repositories across the state which are available to the public. Consists of the collection descriptions or "finding aids" that archives, libraries, and museums create to assist users in locating information in their collections. Consider these an extended table of contents which describe unique materials only available at the individual repositories. In most cases, the collections themselves are NOT available online. A list of participating TARO repositories is available.
Getty Research PortalThe Getty Research Portal™ is a free online search platform providing worldwide access to an extensive collection of digitized art history texts from a range of institutions. This multilingual and multicultural union catalog affords art historians and other researchers the ability to search and download complete digital copies of publications devoted to art, architecture, material culture, and related fields.
The Archives and Information Services (ARIS) division of the Texas State Library and Archives Commission works to preserve the records of government and make accessible historically significant records and other valuable resources in many formats, including printed materials, electronic records and photographs.
Sources for Research
On Built in Buffalo, Cynthia Van Ness, who is local to Buffalo, includes the types of resources that you might consider consulting as you look for material on your subject. Ignoring the Buffalo specific, think about where you might find some of these types of resources. If you are not sure, you can always consult your local librarian, Katie Pierce Meyer.
The Clarke Historical Library at Central Michigan University also has guide that identifies different types of resources one might consult while researching a house.
