Margaret Herrick Library, Special cinema library in Beverly Hills, US.

The Margaret Herrick Library is a specialized library in Beverly Hills that focuses on cinema and film history. It holds tens of thousands of screenplays, books about film, photographs, and documents showing how movies were created over many decades.

The library was founded in 1928, a year after AMPAS itself, and first occupied rooms at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel, where it served mainly as a reading area for members. Margaret Herrick, hired as librarian in 1936 for a symbolic dollar a year, built it into a research institution; her 1947 acquisition of the William Selig papers was its first archival collection. Renamed for her on her 1971 retirement, it moved in 1991 into Beverly Hills' former waterworks, the Fairbanks Center for Motion Picture Study.

The library is named after Margaret Herrick, its librarian from 1936 to 1943 and later executive director until 1971; it was renamed in her honour at her retirement. Herrick secured the William Selig papers in 1947, the library's first archival collection, and in 1952 negotiated the televised Academy Awards broadcast that made the awards and the library financially independent of the major studios.

Access to the collection is available for researchers and film professionals by appointment, usually on weekdays during business hours. It is best to contact the library in advance and let them know what interests you, so staff can prepare the right materials for your visit.

The library's building was Beverly Hills' former waterworks, abandoned in 1976 and later threatened with demolition after graffiti and structural damage. The Academy signed a 55-year lease in 1988, and architect Frances Offenhauser led a $6 million restoration that kept the open interior nearly intact before the library reopened there in January 1991.