By the Numbers: Sports

30,000
Number of objects—in addition to 40 million pages of documents—held at the Pro Football Hall of Fame’s Ralph Wilson Jr. Pro Football Research and Preservation Center in Canton, Ohio. The archive has more than 100 scrapbooks, game programs, and game summaries dating back to the early 20th century, as well as biographical files for current and former players and teams.

5 million
Approximate number of images depicting Indy 500 races and history preserved by the Indianapolis Motor Speedway (IMS) archive. IMS partnered with Indiana University Indianapolis Library to digitize its collection, which dates back to the IMS Company’s founding in 1909.

7
Number of Paralympic medals won by Amanda McGrory, a wheelchair-racing athlete and librarian. McGrory, who earned her MLIS after retiring from racing, is now archivist and collections curator for the US Olympic and Paralympic Committee in Colorado Springs, Colorado. (Check out our Call Number podcast interview with McGrory from February 2024.)

140,000
Number of baseball cards housed at the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum’s library and research center in Cooperstown, New York.

1,800
Number of artworks held by the American Sport Art Museum and Archives (ASAMA) in Daphne, Alabama. Located on the campus of the United States Sports University, ASAMA’s collection include paintings, sculptures, posters, and other media, some of which depict famous athletes like baseball trailblazer Jackie Robinson, basketball legend Michael Jordan, and Olympic gymnast Nastia Liukin.

1966
Year that the Ernie Harwell Sports Collection—celebrating notable Black players in baseball, including those who played in the Negro Leagues—was initially donated by sportscaster Ernie Harwell to Detroit Public Library. The by-appointment Harwell Display Room includes portions of the collection, seats from Tiger Stadium, and a mock broadcast booth.

44,000
Number of historic radio and TV broadcast recordings in the Miley Collection, part of Indiana University Bloomington Media School’s National Sports Journalism Center. The collection—started by donor and sports fan John Miley when he was a teenager—dates back to the 1930s and includes decades of Super Bowl, World Series, and Kentucky Derby broadcasts, among others. Library of Congress acquired 6,000 Miley recordings in 2011.