Due to pending renovations at Northern Arizona University’s Cline Library, the Arizona Historical Society will relocate its Northern Division collections to the agency’s Arizona History Museum in Tucson. The move will take place on Tuesday, August 18 and will ensure the long-term preservation and care of these important archival collections documenting northern Arizona’s rich history.

These historical records total over 1,000 linear feet of photographs, manuscripts, glass slides, and other documents chronicling the last 150 years of the history of northern Arizona and the Colorado Plateau. These important collections document the histories of Indigenous Arizonans; Flagstaff community development; logging, mining, and other industries; and national parks, forests, and other public lands in the region.

Essential updates and renovations at the Cline Library may result in a reduction in overall storage capacity. This prompted a deeper review by the staff of the Cline’s Special Collections of its overall holdings and their alignment with its own educational and archival mission. The same space limitations now facing the Cline Library are not an isolated issue, but a problem faced by libraries and museums around the state. The decision to move these materials came after nearly three months of negotiations and deliberations between AHS and the Cline Library.

“This was a difficult decision and involved discussions with the Special Collections and Archives team as well as the library administration,” said Peter Runge, head of the NAU Cline Library Special Collections and Archives. “As much as we would like to retain several of the AHS Northern Division collections, it became increasingly evident that it was going to be challenging from a logistical and resource perspective.”

At the present time there is no suitable space to keep them nearby, though new opportunities will continue to be reviewed by AHS staff in close collaboration with Cline’s own personnel. Any future transfer of any part of AHS collections comes with conditions, however. AHS is mandated by state statute to properly care for the state’s historical treasures and such transfers must only be done in partnership with an institution that can also properly maintain the collections to an adequate standard of care. In the interim, the move of the AHS Northern Division archival collections to its Tucson facility will ensure that these historical records are properly preserved, making them accessible and available to current researchers and future generations. Once Cline Library facility renovations are completed, NAU and AHS will renew discussions about returning these collections to Flagstaff, potentially even transferring ownership to Cline Library. In the interim, other considerations to ensure public access to these important archival collections are already underway.

The Arizona History Museum in Tucson is an accredited museum with both the capacity to properly manage and steward an archival collection of this size and the resources to continue to make them available—by appointment only—to the public for research purposes, starting this coming fall. Some of the archival materials have been digitized and are available online on Cline Library’s Colorado Plateau Digital Collections webpage. Finding aids are available via the Arizona Archives Online website. For a nominal fee, the agency accepts requests to perform additional digitization services for those unable to travel to the Tucson museum.

For additional details about accessing these research materials, please contact the AHS Archives at AHSReference@azhs.gov.