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Members and the general public are welcome to visit the AMC Library & Archives for research. Researchers should contact Librarian and Archivist Becky Fullerton at AMCLibrary@outdoors.org or 617- 391-6629 to make an appointment. Also, visit the AMC Online Library Catalog. Duplicates of images from the library can be ordered for a fee, which goes toward AMC's efforts to preserve its historical collection.

Flip to Flashback on the last page of this magazine and you'll find an image from the AMC Library & Archives. The topic is the centennial of AMC's New York–North Jersey Chapter.

Past Flashback stories have covered other aspects of regional history, organizational accomplishments, and AMC ephemera, but in virtually all cases, the source for Flashback content has been the archives.

Housed on the fourth floor of AMC's Boston headquarters, the AMC Library & Archives is home to more than 50,000 items, including 3,120 book and serial titles, 500 maps and architectural plan views, and 20,000 images.

Today's collection has grown substantially since the club's first year—1876—when materials were housed in donated space at the Society of Natural History (now known as the Museum of Science) in Boston. AMC's secretary reported 10 items in the collection back then, "ranging from books on the White Mountains to maps of the mineral resources of New South Wales," notes AMC Librarian and Archivist Becky Fullerton.

The Library & Archives holds organizational records as well, reaching back to the minutes of AMC's first meeting, in the hand of Recording Secretary Rosewell B. Lawrence, whose penmanship, according to Fullerton, was "particularly lovely."

Unusual items include summit registers from 1875 to 1925. Often tucked into a jar or can, these would be unfurled and signed by climbers to mark their mountaintop visits. Included in the collection is a Mount Clinton register carrying the signatures William Curtis and Allan Ormsbee left on June 30, 1900, the day they perished in a summer storm on Mount Washington while hiking to the summit for an AMC meeting. Their deaths spurred creation of a shelter near Lakes of the Clouds soon thereafter.

The autographs of famous figures, including Everest summiters Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay, grace books in the collection. Fullerton makes a point of getting copies of new books that include materials from the Library & Archives to add to the collection—and asks the authors to sign them.

In addition to working in the stacks, a typical day might find Fullerton drafting a grant proposal or meeting with a donor wishing to contribute materials to the archives.

"I meet a lot of interesting people who are just as passionate about history as I am. A lot of them are working on fascinating projects, and the types of information they are looking for often give me the chance to highlight some gem in our collections that hasn't been explored for decades," she says. "It often feels as though I'm helping them unravel a mystery or uncover some long-lost story."

The Library & Archives is expanding, and evolving, too. "Even the idea of having an archives is an important concept for us. Traditionally the library has been a place to keep and share maps, books, images, and ideas, but until recently it has not been seen as a place to collect and maintain a record of the club itself," Fullerton points out.

Collecting, cataloguing, and conserving, by Fullerton and various teams of interns over the years, continues apace. "We still have enormous gaps from the days when officers kept their own documents at home," she says. Fullerton is eager to receive and archive such records "so that 100 years down the road, there will be a paper trail of AMC's accomplishments."

And, perhaps, a few more famous autographs as well.