The Research Center actively collects published material, archives and manuscripts, photographs, and other research material that support the museum’s mission and its collections management policy. Examples of the types of material sought by the Research Center include:
Personal papers and institutional records: letters, diaries, legal and financial documents, scrapbooks, photographs, etc.
- Photographs
- Books and pamphlets
- Maps
- Posters and prints
- Broadsides
- Trade literature: advertisements, catalogs, instructions, etc.
- Audiovisual material: motion picture film, video, audio recordings, etc.
- Ephemera: programs, invitations, tickets, menus, calendars, etc.
- Published and unpublished memoirs, interviews, oral histories
Items generally not suitable for donation:
- General interest publications such as Life magazine, National Geographic, etc.
- Newspapers associated with significant national events
- Reproductions of documents or other material
- Items associated with people and events outside of the Texas Panhandle and neighboring regions
- Duplicates of items already in the collection
- Incomplete or badly damaged items
For information on donating three-dimensional artifacts, please contact the museum’s Collections Manager or the appropriate curatorial department.
All potential donations are reviewed by museum staff and by an advisory committee before final acceptance by the board of trustees. Donations require completion of a document transferring ownership of the items.to the Panhandle-Plains Historical Society, signed by the donor. For more information on the donation process, please contact museum staff.