You can help strengthen the Briscoe Center’s foundation of success by supporting one of the center’s priority projects. With your help, funding key positions—curators, archivists, interns, research fellows—as well as the preservation of collections, acquisition of new materials, and production of projects, helps the Briscoe Center share its collections for teaching and research with students, faculty, scholars, and other visitors.
Make a difference today. Give now.
Collection development and access
Collections are the heart of the Briscoe Center. While most archives are donated to the center, there is a significant financial cost associated with managing the collections that the center must be prepared to bear. Far and away the most expensive aspect to collecting, preserving, and making the evidence of history available to the public is the cost of recruiting, training, and retaining an expert team of professional staff. Your contributions to support collection development and access is vital to our ability to make the evidence of history widely available. Support from donors like you has been instrumental in developing the center as one of the leading American history archives in the United States.
Costs associated with collection development and access include:
- Recruiting, training, and retaining an expert team of professional staff;
- Travel costs for staff curators and archivists to review and assess archives offered to the center;
- Specialized archive transportation services;
- Climate-controlled archival storage using the latest methodologies in preservation;
- Conservation assessment and treatment of fragile materials;
- Ever-evolving technological advancements in hardware and software for storing digital, audio, and visual records as well as professional development to maintain staff expertise;
- Creating, managing, and storing collection metadata.
Occasionally, the center must compete for material needed to enhance a collection at auction. Readily available gift funds are critical to the center’s ability to respond quickly to unique opportunities and acquire these materials for preservation, teaching, and research.
You can designate your gift to support collection development and access across the center, for a particular collection of personal interest to you, or for one of these key initiatives:
The Archives of American Mathematics Endowment Steering Committee, comprised of leading mathematicians from around the country, is raising funds to establish an endowment to support the Archives in perpetuity. As the only archive in the United States collecting the history of mathematics education, preserving this material and making it widely accessible is critical to the advancement of STEM education in America. The committee is seeking both outright and deferred gifts and is nearly half way to their goal. You can help us reach it.
Learn more about the Archives of American Mathematics and the endowment campaign.
Beloved by generations of his students and respected as a prominent national thought leader, Professor John J. McDermott’s influence will live on through his papers which will enlighten, inspire, and stimulate new ideas in future generations. It was Professor McDermott’s wish that his life’s work would be accessible to students and other scholars to study, assimilate, and use to build new knowledge. The McDermott Papers Project will organize, catalog, and support expanded digitized access to the collection.
Learn more about the McDermott Papers Project.
From the early days of the oil industry in the 1850s to the 1901 discovery of oil at Spindletop through the emergence of the global energy economy, the Briscoe Center’s American Energy Industry Collections include corporate archives, organizational records, personal papers, and oral histories by industry pioneers. Our holdings include the ExxonMobil Historical Collection, one of the largest publicly available archives documenting a single petroleum company. Your gift will help establish an endowment to fund the American Energy Industry Collections Archivist to arrange, catalog, and digitize additions to the collections and provide valuable research services.
Teaching
Studying primary sources such as those at the Briscoe Center provides a valuable learning experience like few others. Such study enables students to get as close as possible to what actually happened during a historical event or time period. Historical inquiry using the center’s primary records of cultural, social, scientific, and political thought and achievement provides undergraduate and graduate students with an opportunity to practice critical thinking, ask questions, seek answers, and synthesize disparate bits of information into a meaningful whole—critically important skills in this great information age.
Introducing students to primary source materials exposes many to a world of investigation and intellectual discussion they have not experienced before. Working with primary sources, students can become involved in the debates surrounding multiple perspectives on great issues of the past.
Many students experience the thrill of holding rare documents for the first-time during class visits to the center arranged by their professors. The Briscoe Center’s archivists introduce the vast array of material available to explore as well as teach information literacy skills and techniques for using primary source material in research projects to these students. Other professors hold regular meetings of their graduate seminars in the center’s classrooms so that students can work directly with collection material and access the archivist’s expertise as they narrow down their theses and dissertation topics. Working regularly with the center’s archival material provides an opportunity for graduate students to master the use of primary source evidence in research—a skill critical to their successful completion of a graduate degree program.
Our highly-skilled archivists also work side by side with graduate students appointed to an internship at the Briscoe Center, offering guidance as students develop skills, and sharing insights into the profession and connections to colleagues for the student’s growth.
As one of the university’s intellectual catalysts, the Briscoe Center is well-placed to inspire and support students at any stage of their academic career.
Learn more about gift opportunities that support teaching at the Briscoe Center today:
Internships
Internships at the Briscoe Center for American History are designed to provide students and recent graduates from a variety of disciplines with guided experience in preparation for launching professional careers. Interns are active participants in the work of the Briscoe Center. As part of one of the nation’s leading institutions of higher education, the Briscoe Center’s staff is committed to creating rich learning experiences for future generations of archivists, curators, historians, and museum administrators.
Your contribution will help provide wages for interns to work alongside professional staff on projects from across the Briscoe Center including archival enterprises, digitization and metadata, information management, museum studies, archive administration, historical research, and more. Intern projects advance the Briscoe Center’s mission and the educational goals of the students.
You can make a significant difference in a student’s future and the cause of history with a gift to support experiential learning through an internship at the Briscoe Center. Your gift today will help fund opportunities for interns working in a variety of areas across the Briscoe Center.
While $5,000 supports one student for one semester, every gift is important. Together, each gift combined with other gifts can make a significant difference in a student’s life and future career opportunities.
The Briscoe Center does great work, but more can be done.
You can help.
Together, we can preserve history by training the next generation of archivists, curators, and historians and help set students on the path toward successful careers.
Learn more about internship opportunities at the Briscoe Center.
376th Heavy Bombardment Group Endowed Graduate Internship in Archival Enterprises
The descendants of the World War II-era 376th Heavy Bombardment Group voted to donate their records and to establish an endowment to support a graduate intern studying archival enterprises. The intern will gain practical archive experience while assisting the Briscoe Center’s archivists and curators in making its military history collections available for research.
Learn more about the 376th HBG Endowed Graduate Internship and how you can help.
Dirck Halstead Internship in Photographic Archives
In celebration of a remarkable man who was generous with his support of both student and professional photojournalists, the Briscoe Center seeks to honor Dirck’s last wish by establishing an internship in his name. But we need the help of his friends, colleagues, and students to do so.
Learn more about the Dirck Halstead Internship in Photographic Archives and how you can help.
Research
The powerhouse of a great university is its libraries and archives. As one of UT Austin’s intellectual catalysts, the Briscoe Center is home to a vast assemblage of primary source evidence, the raw materials of historical research—the documents, photographs, artifacts, recordings, or other sources of information, created by eyewitnesses to, or participants in, an event. By examining original material, students, scholars, and researchers uncover evidence to support previously untold stories, identify new perspectives on existing interpretations, and evaluate current events based on historical evidence.
Working directly with archival evidence provides clues to the past not available from digital versions which are often used in early resource survey work for a project. A timeline of events can be confirmed or denied for example, based on indicators such as the type of ink or paper used in key documents. These clues are difficult, if not impossible, to ascertain using only digital copies.
As a project progresses, the researcher will need to visit the center’s reading room in person, to investigate further. Such onsite research results in a variety of projects including dissertations, scholarly articles and books, as well as works for a wider audience such as popular fiction, nonfiction, and documentary film from which many other people can learn more about the events of our nation’s past in order to understand the present and anticipate future change. Support for in-person research at the Briscoe Center is vital to advancing both academic careers and America’s understanding of its own past.
You can help support substantial collection-based onsite research by students, faculty, visiting scholars, and independent researchers from all over the world by establishing a named research fellowship in American history or a particular collection strength.
Fellowships support travel and living expenses for up to three months so that visiting researchers can complete research for dissertations, articles, book-length manuscripts, and documentary film.
Your gift in support of research has multiple benefits:
- It builds a deeper awareness of material in the center’s collections in the academic community.
- It helps graduate students complete degree requirements and helps position them to launch a successful academic career.
- It helps faculty and independent scholars pursue research interests resulting in the creation of secondary sources based on the primary sources in the collection.
- It helps journalists, fiction and nonfiction writers, and filmmakers provide historical context in their work.
There are four types of support for research at the Briscoe Center:
Contact Lisa Avra to learn more about how you can help support research at the Briscoe Center.
Projects
The Briscoe Center facilitates the public’s exploration of American history by making its collections widely available through collection-based ventures such as exhibitions and public programs, books, documentary films, and innovative digital projects. Your contributions to support our endeavors based on the collection is vital to our ability to make the evidence of history widely available.
Expand the menu selections below to learn more about how to support different Briscoe Center endeavors. New special projects are added periodically.
The Briscoe Center has produced more than 200 exhibitions since 1981. Based on the center’s collections, multiple short-term exhibitions are curated, produced, and installed at the center’s four locations each year:
- Research and Collections galleries on The University of Texas at Austin campus;
- Sam Rayburn Museum in Bonham, Texas;
- Briscoe-Garner Museum in Uvalde, Texas;
- Winedale, an educational complex comprised of important examples of nineteenth-century architecture and artifacts near Round Top, Texas.
Exhibitions at these sites, and those prepared for online viewing, encompass topics in Texas and Southern history, news media history, photography, photojournalism, civil rights, women’s history, decorative arts, entertainment and music history, and many more.
In addition to our own exhibition program for display in the center’s galleries around the state and online, the center will on occasion travel one of its exhibitions to other locations across the nation. The center also collaborates with partners to produce exhibitions for display at partner galleries and museums.
This robust exhibition program provides numerous opportunities for faculty to introduce students to the variety of primary source material available for further study and for the public to engage with the center’s collections. The center’s exhibitions and public programs are funded entirely with charitable donations.
Your company’s sponsorship of a particular Briscoe Center exhibition, educational program, special event, book, film, or digital project makes it possible for the evidence of history in the center’s collections to be shared with a wide audience. Together, let’s map strategic investments that can showcase your brand and align with your vision for impact.
It’s easy to give now to the Briscoe Center’s exhibitions and programs fund.
Learn more about exhibition and public programs sponsorship opportunities.
Contact Lisa Avra to discuss naming opportunities in support of the Briscoe Center’s exhibitions and public programs.
As a leading history research center, the Briscoe Center’s archival, artifact, photography, and library collections inspire numerous book projects by both center staff and visiting researchers. From photography monographs to political histories to memoirs, the Briscoe Center’s staff has researched and published a range of titles encompassing key themes in Texas and United States history. Your philanthropic gifts help support the center’s research, writing, editing, design, and printing of books based on the collection.
Learn more about the center’s book projects.
Give now to the Briscoe Center’s publications fund to help support the center’s next book project.
There is something magical about handling an old and fragile document that can transport the reader back to the time and place it was created. However, not every student of American history can travel to the center’s reading room to experience this wonder in person. Access to digital images of collection material from the comfort of the researcher’s home or office offers a viable substitute for many to move forward with their research project.
Supporting patrons remotely, as well as in-person, in their teaching and research endeavors is critically important for the Briscoe Center in the 21st century.
With more than 17 miles of archives, 8 million photographs, 55,000 sound recordings, 35,000 maps, a rare book library with 65,000 volumes, and much more, expanding the depth and breadth of the center’s digital collections is a top priority—and no small task. You can help by contributing to the center’s Digital Collections Fund or by sponsoring a digital legacy project.
Digital collections
Creating high-resolution digital facsimiles of collection items and providing online access to the resulting digital collection via the center’s website gives the center’s patrons the ability to bring the evidence of history into their classrooms, homes, and offices. By expanding the center’s digital collections, more people from all over the world will have access to historical documents, photographs, audio and visual material, and more to support their teaching and research projects.
Digital collections advance the mission of the Briscoe Center by:
- promoting the inclusion of primary sources in classroom teaching.
By making more collection material readily available online, primary, secondary and higher education faculty can include images of historical evidence in their instructional plans rather than rely on narrative descriptions to inspire students. - helping researchers prepare for efficient onsite visits.
Access to digital collections offers researchers an opportunity to conduct their early survey work virtually, allowing them to reduce the volume of material needed for in-person review and the number of future onsite visits to the center’s reading room located on The University of Texas at Austin campus. - increasing research access to fragile and large-scale artifacts.
The center’s collections include over 25,000 objects of material culture. Due to size, weight, or fragility, larger-than-life monuments, furniture, oversized maps, and fragile textiles within this collection cannot be accessed by the public via the reading room. Including images of such material in the digital collections makes it available to the public for study. Providing digital images of fragile archival documents and photographs to researchers when feasible helps reduce the number of times these items are physically handled. - capturing an item’s condition for preservation reference.
Collection material arrives at an archive in a variety of conditions. Some are well preserved and others are not. Additionally, some items were created on material not intended by the creator to last. Digitization is an important tool in the preservation and conservation of archives. It captures the item’s condition at that moment in time so that staff can monitor any changes in the item’s condition and adjust its preservation protocols accordingly. Digital images are used for reference should the item ever require conservation treatment. And digital images provide research access for staff and patrons to items that are too fragile to handle.
With charitable gifts from friends, collection donors, researchers, ambassadors council members, students, and staff to sustain the growing digital collections, the Briscoe Center established the Digital Collections Fund to:
- give students studying archival enterprises valuable training and experience.
Digital Collections Interns work alongside the center’s professional staff. Interns engage directly with the collections as they apply digital information management skills learned in the classroom and master digitization technology. These experiences help them launch successful careers in archival professions after graduation. - support the center’s digitization equipment and technology infrastructure.
The Digital Collections Fund helped the center make a significant investment toward expanding its digital collections with the purchase of a state-of-the-art, high-resolution and high-output digitization system in 2021. The fund will help maintain this new equipment, support the digital collections’ technology infrastructure, and provide for hardware and software upgrades as needed. - position the Briscoe Center as a leader in archival digitization.
Perpetual support for a staff of professional archivists with the resources to stay abreast of the latest technologies and digitization strategies and techniques is critical to the long-term success of an ever-growing digital collection. Named endowment gifts benefitting the center’s digital collections provide the center with resources each year to support the collection and recruit and retain the country’s best digital archivists to organize, describe, preserve, and make available digitized and born digital collection material.
Digital legacy projects
The Briscoe Center produces curated digital projects about specific collections, groups of related archives, or historical figures with the support of donors and grant makers. Examples include the William P. Clements, Jr. Papers Project, Dan Rather: American Journalist, and the Bernard Rapoport Legacy Project. Currently, the center is developing the Jack Brooks Digital Humanities Project with the support of the Jack Brooks Foundation.
Featuring high-resolution images of collection items, including documents, photographs, and audio and visual material embedded throughout the narratives, these digital projects provide researchers with an introduction to a collection or group of related collections for further exploration and for use as a teaching tool.
You can help. Give today.
Every gift to the Digital Collections Fund helps the center keep pace with advances in digitization technology, support internship opportunities for students, and makes even more of the collection available to students, faculty, and researchers.
Contact Lisa Avra to learn more about how to sponsor a digital project based on the center’s collections or to establish a named endowment in support of the center’s digital collections.
Historic sites
The Briscoe Center helps facilitate the public’s engagement with history by operating three museums located in communities across Texas. Students, families and adult learners explore a variety of topics at these historic sites through tours, school programs and events.
Your philanthropic gifts are instrumental in preserving these historic structures and associated collections as well as producing exhibits, programs and events at each one.
Many prominent politicians have gathered at Ettie and John Nance Garner’s home, a National Historic Landmark designed by Atlee Ayres and built in 1920. Now, as a museum, the Garner home offers a place for students, families, scholars, and history enthusiasts to learn about the significant impact of two of Uvalde’s native sons.
The Briscoe-Garner Museum is dedicated to sharing the remarkable lives and legacies of two of the most influential twentieth-century political leaders from the Lone Star State: Vice President John Nance “Cactus Jack” Garner and Governor Dolph Briscoe. The museum, located in Uvalde, Texas, features two permanent exhibitions. Charitable gifts help support
historic preservation of the Garner home, museum operations, and a variety of special exhibitions, student field experiences, public programs, and events.
Learn more about the Briscoe-Garner Museum.
Contribute today to the Briscoe-Garner Museum’s preservation, programs, and exhibitions fund or make a gift to the John Nance Garner Endowment that supports Briscoe-Garner Museum operations.
The Sam Rayburn Museum documents the life and career of Samuel Taliaferro Rayburn (1882–1961) an American politician who served as the 43rd Speaker of the United States House of Representatives. He was a three-time House Speaker, former House Majority Leader, two-time House Minority Leader, and a 24-term congressman, representing Texas’s 4th congressional district as a Democrat from 1913 to 1961. He holds the record for the longest tenure as Speaker of the United States House of Representatives, serving for over 17 years (among his three separate stints).
Mr. Sam, as he was affectionately called by his friends and colleagues, used a gift for distinguished service to the nation as seed money to build the Sam Rayburn Museum in Bonham, Texas as a tribute to the people of his cherished Fannin County. Designed by Roscoe DeWitt, the Classical Revival museum building, constructed of white Georgia marble and placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2005, features an interactive exhibit about Mr. Sam’s life and career as well as an exact replica of the Speaker’s office in Washington D.C. during Rayburn’s tenure. Designed to bring some of the aesthetic of the nation’s capital to Fannin County, the museum serves as a gathering place for students, families and visitors to learn about early- to mid-twentieth century Congress.
Learn more about the Sam Rayburn Museum.
Give now to the Sam Rayburn Museum’s historic preservation fund.
Winedale is a Recorded Texas Historic Landmark, a State Antiquities Landmark, and on the National Register of Historic Places. It is home to numerous nineteenth-century wooden structures including five homes, a one-room schoolhouse, a rare four-square barn, and three log cabins in which an outstanding collection of Texas hand-crafted decorative arts and material culture is displayed. Located on 225 acres of Blackland Prairie and Post Oak Savannah near Round Top, Texas, the site also features the Gideon Lincecum Master Naturalists pollinator garden and nature trail, Lake Winedale, and the Texas AgriLife orchards and weather station.
Winedale was assembled in the late 1960s by Houston philanthropist Miss Ima Hogg as a laboratory for university students to explore a variety of disciplines. One of the Briscoe Center’s signature teaching and research collections, Winedale represents the critical importance of preserving the built environment and material culture as evidence for studying the past.
A variety of public and private educational programs, presented by the Briscoe Center, other departments at The University of Texas at Austin, as well as numerous area colleges, universities and non-profit organizations, are held at Winedale each year.
With ten wood-frame historic structures on the property, preservation work at Winedale is an ongoing process funded entirely by charitable donations. The University of Texas at Austin relies on the generosity of friends and alumni to help support this important work.
Learn more about Winedale.
You can make a difference with a donation today to the Winedale Fund to help support historic preservation, collection management, exhibitions, programs, and special projects.
Please contact Lisa Avra to learn how you can help preserve Winedale in perpetuity by contributing to Miss Ima’s Winedale Stagecoach Inn Endowment or establishing a new named endowment for historic preservation at Winedale.
