About the Library
With over 10 million photographs, 300,000 clipping files, 80,000 screenplays 35,000 movie posters and 32,000 books, the Academy’s Margaret Herrick Library maintains one of the most extensive collections of movie-related materials ever assembled.
Devoted to the history and development of the motion picture both as an art form and as an industry, library holdings include more than 1,000 special collections, representing such industry giants as Katharine Hepburn, Alfred Hitchcock, George Stevens, John Huston, Fred Zinnemann, Mary Pickford and Gregory Peck.
The library also has extensive holdings of costume design sketches, production design drawings, lobby cards, publicity materials, sheet music, music scores and sound recordings.
Open to the public, the Margaret Herrick Library is a non-circulating research facility.
The Academy established the library in 1928, a year after the organization was founded. It was later named for Margaret Herrick, the Academy’s first librarian and long-time executive director. In 1991 the library moved to its current location in the historic Waterworks building on La Cienega Boulevard in Beverly Hills.
In May 2002 the building was renamed the Fairbanks Center for Motion Picture Study in honor of the first president of the Academy, actor and filmmaker Douglas Fairbanks Sr.
