Here on the University of Michigan's central campus in Ann Arbor stands the William L. Clements Library, home to rare books and manuscripts. It specializes in Americana and in North American history prior to the twentieth century. The library’s holdings are grouped into four categories — Books, Manuscripts, Graphics and Maps — and its primary source materials are expansive and particularly rich in social history, the American Revolution, and the colonization of North America.
Start with the books: the collection includes 80,000 rare books, pamphlets, broadsides, and periodicals. Across the other divisions you are near are 600 atlases and approximately 30,000 maps; 99,400 prints and photographs; 134 culinary periodicals; 20,000 pieces of ephemera; 2,600 manuscript collections; 150 pieces of artwork; 100 pieces of realia; and 15,000 pieces of sheet music. More than 450 researchers visit yearly — undergraduates and graduate students, faculty, and scholars from around the world.
Even Pulitzer Prize–winning historian David McCullough used these collections for the book 1776. David McCullough drew on these collections for his book 1776, and more than 450 researchers a year still come through this door.