By Tim Binnall
A massive collection of material related to the UFO phenomenon has found a home in a rather unlikely location: a New Mexico elementary school. According to a local media report, the National UFO Historical Records Center (NUFOHRC) held a ribbon-cutting ceremony this week at Martin Luther King Jr. Elementary in the city of Rio Rancho. Housed within two portable classrooms at the school, the sizeable archive is the handiwork of UFO researcher David Marler, who has spent decades collecting an astounding array of materials connected to the curious phenomenon. To that end, the archive boasts a library of over 2,000 books on the subject and a wealth of files from researchers and investigative organizations.
"It’s literally overwhelming. People don't have any conception until they come here how much material that we're talking about," Marler marveled, "and it really, I think, makes people pause and realize there's a lot more to this UFO subject than I ever thought." Observing that "it’s a traditional historical archive dedicated to a non-traditional subject," he mused that the collection could prove particularly fruitful to researchers looking into classic UFO cases. "Some organizations interviewed witnesses that the other did not, and vice versa," he noted, "and sometimes there’s new insights provided by one investigative organization that was never obtained by this one."
As for how the archive wound up being housed at Martin Luther King Jr. Elementary, Marler indicated to a local TV station that "we were looking to have larger facilities because we simply couldn’t accommodate the material that was coming in," especially since the collection was being housed in his Rio Rancho residence. As such, the organization formed a partnership with the city's school department, which sees the archive as a unique opportunity to inspire inquisitiveness in the youngsters. "Our students find the subject matter of UFO investigation very intriguing," explained Rio Rancho Public Schools Chief Operating Officer Michael Baker, "we want to use that as a catalyst in order to get students involved in other types of learning."