Karpeles Manuscript Library Museum, Santa Barbara

The Karpeles Manuscript Library Museums are a private collection of more than a million manuscripts and documents in the United States, the largest such collection in the world. It was founded in 1983 by California real estate magnates David Karpeles and Marsha Karpeles, with the goal of stimulating interest in learning, especially in children, and to make the collection more accessible, is distributed among many Karpeles museums across the US, each located in a historic building, plus "mini-museums" in schools and office buildings. Items are rotated between museums quarterly, and each of the museums presents a daily general exhibit and one or more special scheduled exhibits throughout the year. In addition, Karpeles is aggressively expanding the content of its website. All of the Karpeles Manuscript Library services are free. The museums are located in small and midsize cities, although the Karpeleses put on an exhibit on Central Park West in New York City in 1991. As of February 2020, there were seventeen museums in fifteen cities. ()