A research library is a place where a person can reflect on the extraordinary history and heritage of motor racing. He or she can slow down and appreciate the rush of races and seasons, perhaps remember a favorite driver from years past, or recall the pleasures that have derived from participation in racing. Casual reading and formal study are ways of remembering the zest and richness that racing has given our lives. We can read accounts of heroic accomplishment (Fangio winning at Monza, Stirling Moss and Dennis Jenkinson's glorious feat in the Mille Miglia), and even of the tragedy at LeMans in 1955, for this too is part of our history. Racing is a wonderful panorama of human experience, and a research library attempts to array these events for contemplation and appreciation.

Primary documents help us navigate through the mass of facts, details, and images to find, perhaps, one or two expressions of enduring value as to why we have chosen this particular activity. And racing allows more than many sports: grandeur, fellowship, and virtuosity (and perhaps also vanity and duplicity). Racing is not a quiet sport, and its people live lives of great vigor and enthusiasm.

An archives is a place for serious scholarship, but also for the simple and pure pleasure of basking in the romance and sentiment of the past. It is a place where a person can comfortably take the time to reflect on a beautiful poster of Graham Hill at Monaco, or browse through reference books and dozens of old periodicals from the early years of the sport. He or she can read about the growth of motor racing from its early days when true sportsmen raced in Upstate villages or on Carolina dirt tracks, to its present day multinational corporate enterprise.

An archives also serves the important function of preserving racing's ephemeral history, in the form of records of pre-war races, posters from telephone poles, entry lists, personal photographs, home movies, old programs, and personal scrapbooks. It provides a forum where oral histories can be conducted with the founders of American road racing. It is a place where exhibits are mounted, and where reference archivists and librarians can help patrons sort through mountains of material to find the detail they seek. Modern technology greatly increases patronage and the opportunity for people to learn about and access the archived riches. It is a place for symposia in which drivers from earlier eras can discuss their experiences from a first-person perspective.