Members of the University of Notre Dame community now have access to The Olympic Movement: Sport, Global Politics and Identity, a collection of digitized primary source materials about the modern Olympic Games.

“This resource offers a cache of information for anyone researching the history of sport, whether in the United States or internationally, particularly the intersections of sports and politics and sports and culture,” Greg Bond, sports studies subject specialist and sports archivist, said.

The database, purchased in 2025, contains materials from the Olympic Museum in Lausanne, Switzerland; the United States Olympic and Paralympic Archives; the British Film Institute; and the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library.

It also features digitized materials from former Olympic athlete Avery Brundage, who later worked in sports administration for the United States Olympic Committee and the International Olympic Committee (IOC), serving as president for two decades. According to Bond, his papers, digitized from the University of Illinois Archives, are essential for understanding the history of the Olympic movement in the United States and worldwide.

“Each digitized document in the Olympic Movement Collection includes meticulous descriptions and tagging, helping users find the sources of greatest interest,” Bond said. “The collection includes a range of print, manuscript, and graphic source types, such as posters from the 1928 Olympic Games in Amsterdam, clippings and publications about the movement to boycott the 1936 Berlin Olympics, scrapbooks documenting the 1960 Olympic Games in Tokyo, correspondence related to the protest of Tommie Smith and John Carlos at the 1968 Mexico City Olympics, and letters sent by leaders of the IOC leading up to the 1980 Olympic Winter Games in Lake Placid.”

To locate materials in the Olympic Movement Collection, researchers will need to search the database directly, as individual sources cannot be located through OneSearch. Once inside the database, users will be able to perform full-text searching of the materials and access thematic guides to easily identify sources on specific topics.

“The database is designed with student learners in mind,” Mark Robison, department head, Academic Collections and Services, said. “Its research tools make the collection more accessible to the beginning researcher who might lack some understanding of the historical context about particular games, athletes, or teams. Students from departments across campus can find helpful primary sources about an array of international topics in the collection. Classes in the Sport, Media, and Culture minor will find The Olympic Movement particularly useful for student research projects.”

For more information, contact Greg Bond or Mark Robison, Hesburgh Libraries.