The RAI Collection
The RAI has a unique reference and research collection comprising photos, films, archives and manuscripts.
The photographic library consists of over 75,000 historic prints, negatives, lantern-slides and other images, the earliest dating from the 1860s. The photo library illustrates the great diversity and vitality of the world's cultures as well as the history of photographic image-making itself.
The RAI is actively involved in developing ethnographic film and video, as a mode of anthropological enquiry and as an educational resource. It has an extensive collectionn of videos, copies of which are available for sale for educational and academic purposes. Films can be studied and previewed onsite.
The archive and manuscript collection spans a period of over 150 years, providing a unique historical record of the discipline and of the Institute itself. Much unpublished textual and visual material entrusted to the RAI over the years is held in the manuscript collection, which is being conserved and catalogued on a continuing basis.
Access to the RAI Collection is free to all RAI Fellows, Members, Student Associates and all undergraduate students by prior appointment. Others may visit the Collection on payment of an access fee.
The RAI has a close association with the British Museum's Anthropology Library, which incorporates the former RAI Library given to the Museum in 1976. The Library is located within the Centre for Anthropology at the British Museum, and is effectively Britain's national anthropological library. All may use the Library on site; RAI Fellows may borrow books acquired by the RAI.
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