Collecting Areas
The collections are the core of the Library & Archives.
Overview
The Hoover Institution Library & Archives collects both geographically and thematically. With more than 1 million library volumes and 6,000 archival collections, originating from 171 countries and in 69 languages, we rely on our curators as subject matter experts to oversee and actively acquire these collections in alignment with the mission of the institution.
Curatorial Areas
China & Greater Asia Collections
China & Greater Asia Collections
The Curator for Modern China and Taiwan Collections, Hsiao-ting Lin, manages the extensive China and Taiwan collections as well as materials from across Asia. Find rare publications and archival materials assembled by government officials, diplomats, military personnel, businessmen, missionaries, journalists, scholars, and private individuals chronicle social, economic, and political conditions. While maintaining the library and archives’ strength in documenting Asia’s transformations in the late nineteenth to twentieth centuries, our collecting efforts also focus on contemporary affairs.
European Collections
European Collections
Against the background of the first great European war of the early twentieth century, Herbert Hoover’s idea of a scholarly institution collecting documentation on war, revolution, and peace was conceived and developed. Greatly expanded during the decades that followed, European materials now constitute the largest and most comprehensive part of Hoover’s international holdings.
Japan & Japanese Diaspora Collections
Japan & Japanese Diaspora Collections
Under the care of Curator Kaoru (Kay) Ueda, our many Japan and Japanese Diaspora collections focus on social, political, and economic change from the Meiji (1868–1911) to post–World War II reconstruction (1945–52) periods in Japan and overseas Japanese communities. Major topics of the Japan collection include the Sino-Japanese War of 1894–95; pre–World War II domestic affairs; Japanese-sponsored governments in China, Taiwan, and Southeast Asia; the post–World War II Allied occupation, the International Military Tribunal for the Far East, the US-Japan Security Treaty. Records of the Japanese Communist Party and proceedings of the Imperial Diet, 1890–1946, are available. The Japanese Diaspora collection includes the Hoji Shinbun Digital Collection, which is the world’s largest open-access full-image digital collection of Japanese newspapers published in North America.
Latin America Collections
Latin America Collections
Curator Herb Klein manages these collections which concentrate on political and economic developments during the twentieth century. The Cuban revolution, Juan Perón and the Perónist movement, and various civil wars in Central America are well documented. Numerous materials concern relations with the United States, including US military interventions in several countries. Others focus on the adoption, in recent decades, of free-market economic policies by Latin American governments.
Middle East & North Africa Collections
Middle East & North Africa Collections
The Middle East collection was formally established in 1948 with the appointment of its first curator, Dr. Christina Phelps Harris, and the acquisition of the libraries of James Heyworth-Dunne, Hidayet Dağdeviren, and Richard P. Mitchell. Building on this foundation, the collection now includes materials on political and social movements in the Middle East and North Africa, relations with the U.S. and Europe, education development, and military affairs. A particular highlight is the digital Afghan Serials Collection, which includes over 400 publications from the 1960s through the 2000s.
North America Collections
North America Collections
Managed by Curator Jean McElwee Cannon, the North American collections represent nearly half of Hoover's archival holdings and focus on US and Canadian involvement in international conflicts, foreign relations, laissez-faire economics, political groups and movements, intellectual history, peace, education, émigré affairs, nuclear energy, and arms control. While some earlier materials are present, the bulk documents the 20th and 21st centuries, with a collecting emphasis on contemporary issues.
Russia & Eurasia Collections
Russia & Eurasia Collections
Managed by the Robert Conquest Curator Anatol Shmelev, the Russian and Eurasian materials date back to mid-19th century Russian legation papers in the German states. Other materials cover major events in the Eurasian heartland: the Russo-Japanese War, First World War, revolution of 1917 and the Russian Civil War, anti-Communist emigration, development of the USSR, Second World War, emergence of the dissident movement, and the collapse of the Soviet Union and development of newly independent states since 1991.
Sub-Saharan Africa Collections
Sub-Saharan Africa Collections
The African holdings emphasize history, politics, economics and economic development, colonial administration and military affairs, national liberation movements, and political and social movements, including communism and socialism. Inter-African and international relations are also represented. The colonial period is particularly well documented by legislative debates, journals, government commission reports, and early government gazettes spanning the early 1900s to the early 1960s.
Collections by Subject
At Hoover there is extensive diversity of materials related to war, revolution, and peace during the 20th and 21st centuries. To enhance understanding of our collections by subjects and themes, please explore some of our collections highlight pages. You can also search our research guides which collect together lists of thematically related collections.
Highlights
Cold War
Communism
Conservatism
Economics
Herbert Hoover
Peace
Propaganda & Psychological Warfare
Cold War
Collections are from US secretaries of state, individual activists and propagandists, and many émigré groups involved in the ideological struggle. Important subsets are collections relating to “citizen diplomacy,” in which individuals and organizations acted to defuse international tensions, particularly the danger of nuclear conflict; records of organizations on the front lines, such as the Free Europe Committee (later RFE/RL), involved in broadcasting and other activities aiming to penetrate the Iron Curtain; and papers relating to the role of the Third World in the confrontation.
Communism
The collections contain extensive resources on communist states and communist parties, as well as materials compiled by anticommunist organizations and individuals. Among the most significant are microfilm copies of Soviet Communist Party records and a number of collections relating to Trotskyist organizations in the United States and other countries.
Conservatism
Conservative politics, institutions, and thought form a major collecting area, intersecting with materials concerning anticommunism, free market economic policies, and government. Collections concerning the Libertarian Party and its leaders, student organizations, radical groups, and women of the political right are present, alongside sound recordings of Ronald Reagan and broadcasts of William F. Buckley's Firing Line television program.
Economics
Major collections in this area include the papers and organizational records of prominent advocates of laissez-faire economic principles, particularly from the United States, Austria, and Great Britain. Other materials relate to domestic and international economic conditions, foreign aid and development, and war reconstruction, as well as a small but important set of documents concerning Soviet agrarian policy.
Herbert Hoover
Between 1919, when he founded the Hoover Institution, and his death in 1964, Herbert Hoover routinely deposited his papers in the Library & Archives. Those papers mainly concern his relief activities during and after World Wars I and II, his political and personal philosophy, his public service activities, his speeches and writings, and his postpresidential career. Scholars interested in Hoover's papers from his tenure as secretary of commerce (1921–28) and United States president (1929–33) will find them at the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library in West Branch, Iowa.
Peace
The collections cover peace movements in the United States and Europe during World War I and the interwar period. Among them are the papers of pacifist Alice Park and Nobel Peace Prize recipient Alfred Fried. The library holds many rare pamphlets issued by peace organizations. Other archival collections concern disarmament and peace movements in the Vietnam War era.
Propaganda & Psychological Warfare
The Hoover Institution’s propaganda collections are unrivalled in the world, beginning with its extensive poster collection and large holdings of Communist Party literature (Soviet, Chinese and other), through sound recordings and film footage (the Alexander and Ethel Pronin collection holds hundreds of reels of Soviet propaganda film), these collections allow researchers to study the techniques and perfection of propaganda from early and crude images through contemporary professional multimedia presentations. Similarly, Hoover’s holdings on psychological warfare (the Bonner Fellers papers, World War II Psychological warfare reports typescript and Psychological Warfare Branch issuances) are excellent resources for studying the development of psychological operations during the Second World War, as are the RFE/RL Broadcast and Corporate records for the Cold War era.
Search Our Collections
Our collections contain rare and unique library materials and archives that include posters, photographs, texts, sound recordings, moving images, and art and memorabilia.
Digital Collections
Access our digital collections which include born-digital materials as well as digitized posters, photographs, manuscripts, moving images, sound recordings, and other historical materials from the Hoover Institution Library & Archives.
