Founded in 1989, the University of Houston-Clear Lake Archives and Special Collections' mission is to collect, preserve, and make publicly accessible original historical archival materials for use by its constituents for research and preservation of community history. The Archives main focus is to serve as the primary repository for those historically-valuable, original archival materials that document the origins, development, activities, and achievements of the University of Houston-Clear Lake (UHCL), and its affiliated centers and subunits.
The Archives’ guiding duty is to serve as a research center for the study of history and institutional memory of the University; and to promote knowledge and understanding of the origins, programs, goals, and accomplishments of the University. The UHCL Archives and Special Collection has the following collecting areas and collections in its holdings: University Archives, Human Space Flight Collection, Clear Lake Area Collection, and the Johnson Space Center (JSC) History Collection. These materials are open for research to UHCL students, alumni, faculty, staff and the general public.
In order to fulfill our mission of preserving a rich collection of primary source material, the UHCL Archives collects, arranges, describes, preserves, and makes accessible and available to the university administration, faculty, students, and wider university body organizational records of permanent administrative, operational, legal, and historical value that relate to the University of Houston-Clear Lake. The Archives has in its holdings correspondence, documents, manuscripts, photographs, oral histories, printed materials, maps, engineering records, digital materials, special publications, posters, student newspapers, and other archival items.
As part of a public university, the UHCL Archives also endeavors to serve the local communities among which the university is situated, acting as a repository for archival collections that document the history and development of the greater Clear Lake area outside of the city of Houston in southeast Texas. We work to help preserve important local historical memory, with a focus on building an ever-expanding range of subject matter contained within these local community collections.
Since 2001, the UHCL Archives has partnered with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration* and its Johnson Space Center to serve as a custodian of the Johnson Space Center History Collection. This partnership has led the Archives to grow its collecting areas to incorporate space and aerospace history collections related to the United States’ human space flight programs, with a collection focus centered around work that occurred at Johnson Space Center.
The UHCL Archives and Special Collections is housed on the upper floor of the Alfred R. Neumann Library in the Bayou Building at the University of Houston-Clear Lake. The library is located on the second floor of the Bayou Building, and the Archives is on the third floor. Elevators are available for access, and direction signs are posted directing researchers from the upstairs elevators and stairs in Neumann Library to the Archives.
Visitors to the Archives, unless UHCL personnel or students, are required to park in visitor lot locations on the UHCL Campus, with the "R" Lot being the most recommended due to its close location to the Bayou Building and the ease of exit from the university for visitors. There is a charge for parking on campus for visitors, to be paid at kiosk stations by credit/debit card, or by the ParkMobile app after 9 A.M. More information on visitor parking is located here: https://www.uhcl.edu/maps/parking/. Current parking rates as of August 2022 are:
Below are links to the UHCL campus map, so visitor parking locations, and the Neumann Library lower and upper floor levels' maps to guide you to the UHCL Archives and Special Collections.
If you have any questions about our collections or would like to schedule a research appointment, please contact UHCL Archives and Special Collections at least 24 hours in advance (for non-UHCL researchers) so that we may prepare your materials for your appointment. We can be reached at archives@uhcl.edu or (281) 283-3962.
The UHCL Archives and Special Collections offers a wealth of material to support research, engage people's interests, and spark imagination about the past and its impact on the future. Our mission is to collect and preserve unique, historical materials and provide access to them in their original form. The purpose of this LibGuides research guide is to provide a basic introduction to the UHCL Archives and Special Collections. What kinds of materials are located in Archives and Special Collections? How area the Archives' holdings different from the holdings in the rest of Alfred R. Neumann Library? How are materials accessed or accessible? Why should you want to know about Archives and Special Collections? As you read through the guide or as you view separate parts of it, here are a couple of things to keep in mind:
1. The materials in the UHCL Archives and Special Collections are here for people to USE! We consciously and intentionally acquire materials and build collections of interest and significance related to our collecting areas, to make them accessible to faculty, students, UHCL staff, scholars, and the general public.
2. In addition to providing access to materials, we are charged with the responsibility of protecting and preserving them, as the historic materials may be unique, invaluable historically, and/or rare. Our work demands a balance between preservation of unique materials and providing access to our collections. This balance informs much of "why" any archival repository like UHCL Archives and Special Collections works in the ways that it does, and has the policies for using its collections that archives usually have [1].
[1] The structure and format of much of the information in this section was taken directly, with some changes, from Virginia Tech University Special Collections and University Archives' "A Basic Introduction" LibGuides page.
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