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The William P. Clements Center for Southwest Studies offers Research Travel Grants to applicants who live outside the greater Dallas-Fort Worth area in order to encourage a broader and more intensive use of the special collections at DeGolyer Library. These awards ensure that the library’s holdings – which are among the very best in the Southwest – are brought to the attention of scholars and their readers, nationally and worldwide. Moreover, these grants bring leading researchers to SMU, which assists in raising the profile of the university as well as the wider Dallas community. In publications resulting from research conducted in its collections, grant recipients will be expected to acknowledge the support of the DeGolyer Library and the Clements Center for Southwest Studies at SMU.

Major subject strengths include the European exploration and discovery of the Americas, the development of the Spanish and Mexican borderlands, and the history of the Trans-Mississippi West. The library also possesses significant collections in the fields of business, transportation (especially related to railroads), and science and technology (with notable holdings in the history of geology). Other collections are devoted to major and minor figures in English and American literature, and there is significant material related to tourism in Mexico.

The DeGolyer Library preserves over 120,000 volumes of rare and scholarly works, over 2,500 separate manuscript collections, over 500,000 photographs, several thousand maps, hundreds of rare periodicals and newspapers, and a large and growing collection of printed ephemera. 

The library’s website is