Just a few of our notable holdings include:

• the Southern Jewish Archives

• an outstanding Latin American collection

• the world's largest historical research collection pertaining to the Mississippi River and its impact on river transportation, industry, and commerce. Included in this collection is one of the world's larger collections of Mississippi riverboat photographs.

• this country’s third largest African-American archives

• a world-renowned archives of New Orleans Jazz

• a research library with over two million volumes

• an Imperial Russian and Early Soviet rare book collection

• a rare book collection of British shire histories

• and one of the world’s major archival collections of the American Civil War, including Jefferson Davis’ papers, Stonewall Jackson’s papers, Albert Sidney Johnston’s papers, and the Gettysburg letters of Robert E. Lee. A researcher cannot write a major new study of the Civil War without visiting Tulane to do research.

In other words, we preserve amazing things.

Tulane preserves such international cultural treasures for one reason—so our students can benefit from studying actual historical documents.

These are not photocopies or microfilm -- they are the original documents themselves. They exist here and nowhere else in the world. It is a rare opportunity for undergraduates to hold, work with, and study such archival treasures, but at Tulane, it is one more part of "the Tulane experience."