The AMC Library and Archives have been an integral part of the AMC since the Club's founding year. The archives anchor a remarkable landscape in which the past lies alongside the present and future of the Club and the Northeast outdoors.
The Library's collection consists of over 3,000 titles. It represents one of the most extensive outdoor recreation book collections in the country and counts among its holdings works on the history of mountaineering, early climbing expeditions, and early explorations. The book collection also contains a vast amount of background information on environmental issues and outdoor activities. At the center of the historical book collection is the Kilbourne Collection of over 500 books on the White Mountains of New Hampshire, one of the largest White Mountain rare book collections in the world. Other mountain areas of the Northeast are also well documented. The library has no less than 22 titles on Mount Katahdin alone!
The Archive’s collection consists of meeting minutes, annual reports, AMC bulletins and journals, scrapbooks, climbing journals, summit registers, photos, films, and maps. The logbooks from the club’s historic mountain huts can be found here, recording the thoughts and feelings of mountain travelers from decades past.
The archival collection is particularly rich in visual images, with well over 10,000 images covering the 1870's to the present. The library owns an extensive collection of lantern slides documenting the AMC's early history, and hundreds of postcards and stereograph cards with views of the mountains of the Northeast. The Frederick Endicott and Ralph C. Larrabee photo collections contain hundreds of photographs by these two local photographers of the White Mountains and Adirondacks taken between 1895 and 1935.
The historic map collection consists of cartographer Edward G. Chamberlain's detailed maps and itineraries documenting AMC outings from 1876 to 1935. Other maps include contemporary and historic maps of the Northeast, U.S. Geological Survey and U.S. Coast Guard maps. The Library and Archives are strongly linked to the AMC’s mission. They help to build awareness of AMC through the use of the club’s images and information in a wide range of publications. The Library supports the Communications Department, which promotes the club through its magazine, journal, website and marketing campaigns. The long history of the organization that is housed by the Library and Archives lends credibility and understanding to the Club's current organization and its initiatives.
