Research
Theodore Roosevelt left behind one of the largest documentary records of any American president — and for a century, it sat scattered across dozens of institutions on opposite sides of the country. Our archives partner, the Theodore Roosevelt Center at Dickinson State University, has spent nearly two decades gathering that record into one place and putting it online, free, for anyone who wants it.
Search the Theodore Roosevelt Center Collections
A Partnership Built on the Record
The Theodore Roosevelt Center grew out of a Dickinson State University initiative launched in 2000 to examine Roosevelt’s impact on North Dakota — and North Dakota’s impact on him. The Center was formally established in 2007, and digitization began the following year.
Its mission is straightforward: preserve and analyze the legacy of America’s 26th president. Located on Dickinson State’s historic hilltop campus, roughly 35 miles east of the Library on I-94, the Center is both a digital archive and a working research institution.
Bringing the Scattered Collections Together
Roosevelt’s papers were never held in one place. The bulk sit at the Library of Congress — an estimated 150,000 documents — with another major body of material at Harvard College Library. Beyond those, Roosevelt materials are held at national park sites, historical societies, museums, and in private hands across the country.
The Center’s Digital Library is the effort to reunite them. Working with partner institutions, the Center digitizes, catalogs, and publishes those holdings in a single searchable archive, with new materials released weekly. Contributing collections include:
- Library of Congress and Harvard College Library
- Six National Park Service sites, including Sagamore Hill, the Theodore Roosevelt Birthplace, the Theodore Roosevelt Inaugural Site, and Theodore Roosevelt National Park
- The Smithsonian Institution, New York Public Library, Newberry Library, and Massachusetts Historical Society
- The State Historical Society of North Dakota, the Theodore Roosevelt Association, and the Theodore Roosevelt Medora Foundation
- Private collections of postcards, sheet music, photographs, film, and memorabilia donated by collectors and researchers
The result is a body of primary sources — letters, speeches, diaries, executive orders, photographs, and ephemera — that a researcher once had to travel the country to consult, now available from anywhere at no cost.
A Place for Scholars to Work
The Center is also a physical research destination. Housed in Lowman Walton Hall on the Dickinson State campus, it offers:
- The Stankard Research Library, an extensive collection of books by and about Roosevelt, along with works by the contemporaries who influenced him
- The Theodore Roosevelt Reading Room, holding rare and signed volumes — and a working Amberola that plays a recording of Roosevelt’s own voice
- A rotating exhibit gallery and private workspaces available to researchers with advance notice
Admission is free and the Center is open to the public year-round, with seasonal hours. Staff provide reference help to everyone from professional historians to schoolchildren. The Center also hosts an annual Theodore Roosevelt Symposium and supports student internships, volunteer programs, and fellowships.
From Archive to Conversation
A digitized archive is only as useful as your ability to find your way into it. The Center’s collection is the foundation beneath two of our own tools.
Campfire is our virtual historian — an AI research companion that draws on the digitized collection to surface documents, images, and stories in response to plain questions. It runs in modes built for different visitors: Discovery and Research for the curious and the serious, and dedicated modes for teachers building lesson plans and students working through homework.
The same underlying model powers Talk with the President, our on-site TR AI exhibit, where visitors can hold a spoken conversation with Theodore Roosevelt himself — grounded in the words he actually wrote and said.
Both are possible because the Center did the unglamorous work first: finding the documents, scanning them, and describing them well enough that they can be found again.