Established in 1982,the Atlanta University Center Robert W. Woodruff Library, Inc. (AUC Woodruff Library) partners with the nation’s largest consortium of historically black colleges and universities: Clark Atlanta University, the Interdenominational Theological Center, Morehouse College and Spelman College, providing information management, instruction and access to a variety of global information resources acquired and organized in support of teaching and learning, scholarship and cultural preservation of the Atlanta University Center and African American history. The Library has evolved into a model repository of information resources and a front-runner in the innovative delivery of digital resources.

The Library’s premier Archives Research Center provides collaborative leadership in preservation, access and collection development of unique archival resources documenting African American history and culture and is noted for its holdings of materials on the African American experience, including the John Henrik Clarke Africana and African American Collection, the Joseph and Evelyn Lowery Collection, the Henry P. Slaughter and Countee Cullen Memorial Collection, Black Women in Radio Historic Collection and the Southern Education Foundation Collection. The Archives Research Center is the repository of institutional records for selected schools within the Atlanta University Center and it serves as custodian of the Morehouse College Martin Luther King, Jr. Collection. In July 2022, the AUC Woodruff Library became the 127th member of the Association of Research Libraries, becoming the second HBCU in its history to achieve this distinction.