Collections and Archives

Brief History of ARC Collections

The core of the our book collection was the personal library of John Vigen Der Manuelian gifted to the ARC in 1989. Over the years the ARC has acquired a collection of over 30,000 volumes, plus periodical series and offprints, unpublished doctoral dissertations, microfilms and microfiche, maps, posters and ephemera, audio-visual materials (long play records, audiocassettes, VHS tapes, CDs and DVDs) and oral histories on Armenian and related topics in English, Armenian, French, Russian, Turkish and many other languages. As of 2021, full bibliographic information for about two-thirds of the books  in our collection is available through the Mardigian Library online catalog.

Work in Progress

Please note that the cataloging of the ARC collections is still in progress. If you are not able to find an item in the Mardigian Library catalog, we may still have it in our collection. In such cases, please contact Mr. Gerald E. Ottenbreit, Jr. at [email protected] or call the ARC at 313-593-5181 for further information.

The ARC’s collection continues to increase through purchases, donations by various individuals, organizations and institutions, and exchanges with other libraries and collections in the United States, Armenia and elsewhere.