Do you know where you can hear and see artist Duane Bryers talk about his ice sculptures and homegrown circus?

Do you know where to see over 700 images of rodeo champions Casey Tibbs and Jim Shoulders?

Where can you find the earliest known day-by-day handwritten account of an 1868 cattle drive from north Texas to Kansas?

Where would you go to look at unique stereographs of the famous aviator Charles A. Lindbergh posing for the Congressional Medal made in his honor?

Where can one go to review James Brisbin's 1881 book, The Beef Bonanza, or, How to Get Rich on the Plains which fueled the speculative fever in the cattle industry, particularly for Victorian entrepreneurs in Great Britain?

Where can one see several stereoviews of Southern Plains Indians wearing the short-lived military 1872-pattern pleated fatigue blouses in their roles as guards at Fort Marion in St. Augustine, Florida?

Where can you find photographic postcard images of Seminole Indians in the Florida Everglades captured by rodeo photographer R. R. Doubleday?


The answer to all these questions is the Donald C. & Elizabeth M. Dickinson Research Center located, with all due deference to Richard Henry Dana, below the deck of the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum. Its collections and staff have served for the past eight years before the mast of the Museum.¹ Nautical allusions aside, the Center holds the library, photographic, and archival collections of the Museum.

As early as February 11, 1956, museum founder Chester Arthur Reynolds expressed an interest in a library as a component of the Museum. Referring to an article about the United States Congress making it possible for the Truman and Eisenhower presidential libraries to become field branches of the National Archives, Reynolds wrote, "When our Shrine is completed we may find that we also qualify as a ‘Field Branch' of the ‘Natl Archives' Assn. We certainly should have a big library and have a separate [sic] room to house it."

On June 26, 1965 the "Hall" opened with Mrs. Dorothy Williams as the first librarian for the "Research Library of Western Americana." Williams' aspiration for this library, as a resource and component of the Western Heritage Center, was to "bridge the gap for scholars, researchers and writers so the West's unique past and heritage will be recognized."

Early publicity literature yields a mission and goals for this library. One such piece reads in part, "This library will contain a most complete collection of Western literature and information on the history of the West. It should become the Mecca of students and researchers who wish to obtain information concerning the life of the American West...Scores of people throughout the country who have collections of rare western books will want to leave them to some library as a memorial. With imaginative planning we should be able to attract some of these collections to our library."

In spite of these auspicious statements, the library gradually succumbed to larger museum priorities. By 1979 there was no professional librarian. A cadre of museum volunteers assumed the tasks of accessioning, classifying, and shelving books, a process which continued into the mid-1990s.

But, interest in and commitment to a library and research center returned by the late-1990s. Founded in 1997 and substantially supported by the Donald C. and Elizabeth M. Dickinson Foundation beginning in 1999, the Center seeks to preserve, document, and interpret the heritage of the American West for the enrichment of the public by collecting, organizing, describing, and making available library, photographic and archival materials related to and supporting interpretive themes determinative of the Museum's collections development.

The holdings of the Research Center can broadly be grouped into the following collections: library and other print materials, still photographs, archival papers/records, moving images, and sound recordings. Including more than 5,000 items, the moving images and sound recording holdings reflect four major museum activities -- Prix de West Exhibition, seminars and demonstrations; Western Heritage Awards winning entries and original productions; the Rodeo Historical Society Oral History project (see http://www.nationalcowboymuseum.org/research/r_rhso.html ); and the A. Keith Brodkin Contemporary Western Artists Project interviews (see http://www.nationalcowboymuseum.org/research/r_keit.html ). Currently, the library includes more than 31,000 books including privately and commercially published volumes. Books can be further delineated into monographs, reference works, and fiction. The rarities section includes works in all these classifications as well.

Other print materials include contemporary trade and supply catalogs (particularly saddlery catalogs), artist, exhibition, auction, and art catalogs, rodeo programs, and periodicals. Not including credible websites and blogs, journals and magazines provide the most current information on topics such as western popular culture, ranching and the cattle industry, western and Native American art, and western history and cultures. Artist, exhibition, and art catalogs are resources that contextualize the Museum's western art collection. Trade catalogs and rodeo programs contextualize and document segments of the Museum's material culture holdings.

The still photographs currently number more than 170,000 images. They include photographic prints, photographic postcards, negatives, cabinet photographs, tintypes, daguerreotypes, stereographs, ambrotypes, and cartes de visite which serve both documentary and interpretive roles (see http://www.nationalcowboymuseum.org/research/r_imagdb_proc.html ). About 91 percent of the still images are rodeo-related. Ephemera items include arcade cards, lobby cards, advertising cards, cigarette and tobacco cards and postcards.

The archival papers/records comprise about 700 cubic feet of documents including vertical files, unprocessed institutional records, and personal papers primarily of artists and performers. Vertical files include information about artists and halls of fame inductees. Papers of performers Milburn Stone and Walter Brennan as well as artists Tom Lovell, Tom Ryan, Bettina Steinke, and Lowell Ellsworth Smith are available to researchers. Funding by the A. Keith Brodkin Contemporary Western Artists Project has facilitated the solicitation, acquisition, and preservation of the personal papers of western artists.

While e-mail, telephone, and visits continue to be the primary means by which patrons can ask reference/research questions, there are additional ways that patrons can access the Center's collections. The Center's homepage at http://www.nationalcowboymuseum.org/research/r_index.html serves a visitor orientation function. Using the Library Catalog quick link at http://216.201.129.140/winnebago/index.asp?lib=??, the visitor can access records about the Center's books, moving images, sound recordings, and collections holdings. The Finding Aids link at http://www.nationalcowboymuseum.org/research/r_arch.html provides the visitor with information about the Center's archival materials. Visitors interested in looking at images can click on the Search Image Archive link at http://imagedb.nationalcowboymuseum.org/inmagicgenie/opac.aspx which facilitates searching by employing consistent personal names and subject terms. As of July 2, 2008, there are 48,202 images (25%) associated with the 193,511 catalog records.

As a contributing member of the Online Computer Library Center (OCLC), the Center has made its collections searchable through WorldCat. More than 53,000 libraries in 96 countries and territories around the world use OCLC services. With over 58 million online records from contributing libraries, OCLC is the largest and most comprehensive database of its kind.

From time to time, the Center features photographic images in small thematic exhibits in the Osborn Studio Gallery. These exhibits are recreated virtually and accessed by the Virtual Exhibits quick link (http://www.nationalcowboymuseum.org/research/r_virt.html ).

With its anchor weighed eight years ago, the Center runs, while wondrously navigating from below deck, on a steady, progressive course through somewhat charted waters. With a compass stuck on the West, it continues to collect, manage, and preserve items; provide reference and outreach services; and be an educational resource. All this without even raising the mainsail.





¹ In 1840 Richard Henry Dana (1815-1882) wrote Two Years Before the Mast a narrative of a young man's voyage as a common seaman from Boston to California and back in the age of sail. The ship's area aft of the mainmast was the quarterdeck onto which ordinary seamen could enter in performance of duties. Hence, to serve "Before the mast" means service as a common sailor.