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The Rare Books and Special Collections Library, located on the third floor of the Library, houses over 250,000 books and over 7,000 linear feet of manuscripts, including the papers of H.G. Wells, Carl Sandburg, and W.S. Merwin; a Spanish Civil War collection of material documenting the U.S. literary and military involvement in Spain's fight against fascism; the Baskette collection on freedom of expression and censorship; the Meine collection of American humor, and thousands of rare books from the 15th -20th centuries. Thumbnail descriptions of selected special collections are available at the web site of the Rare Books and Special Collections Library (http://www.library.uiuc.edu/rbx/speccoll.htm). |
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The Illinois Historical Survey, located in the Rare Books and Special Collections Library, maintains an extensive collection of printed materials on Illinois state and local history and the history of the old Northwest, as well as a manuscript collection with strengths in the history of the colonial and territorial periods, communitarianism in the 19th century, and late-19th and early 20th-century labor history. For information on the Illinois Historical Survey, contact the curator, John Hoffmann (333-1777). |
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The University Archives (http://web.library.uiuc.edu/ahx), located in the basement of the main Library, houses the largest collection of historical manuscripts in Illinois. The focus of the collection is American social, intellectual, and cultural history, but there is significant material pertaining to other parts of the world. Because archives are unpublished, these materials are not classified according to the Dewey Decimal Classification, and they do not appear in the online catalog. Instead, they are arranged according to a system based on "provenance," record groups, sub-groups, and series, and this information is recorded on "control cards" and maintained in a paper file.
Both personal papers and organizational or institutional records are held in the University Archives. Examples include the papers of the journalist James B. Reston (reporter for the New York Times from 1939 to 1989), the papers of Avery Brundage, the president of the U.S. Olympic Committee (1929-52) and International Olympic Committee (1952-72), the records of the American Society for Cybernetics, and the Alpha Tau Omega archives.
Fortunately, you can search the online version of these control cards on the web site of the University Archives (http://web.library.uiuc.edu/ahx/uaccard/default.asp). Contact Bill Maher, University Archivist, or Chris Prom, Assistant University Archivist, for further information on the Library's archival collections (University Archives, Room 19 Library, 333-7998). To search for archival collections in other repositories in the U.S., use ArchiveGrid, available on the Online Research Resources page on the Library Gateway (http://www.library.uiuc.edu/orr/ ). Other online archival guides are listed under Online Resources at the History, Philosophy and Newspaper Library web site (http://www.library.uiuc.edu/hix/online.html).
The Communications Library and the University Archives hold three major collections of print advertising. The Communications Library curates the D’Arcy and Woodward Collections. The D’Arcy collection, containing 2 million ads published between 1890 and 1970, has its own online index of products and brands (http://www.uiuc.edu/providers/comm/DArcy). The entire collection has been microfilmed, and you can obtain color photocopies of these ads. Contact Lisa Romero, Communications Librarian, for help with this material (l-romero@uiuc.edu). The Communications Library also houses the Woodward Collection of approximately four million ads from the late 19th century through the 1980s.
The University Archives houses the Advertising Council Archives (“Only you can prevent forest fires”), which includes material from their campaign ads. The Advertising Council was established in early 1942 to support the war effort through public service advertising. For more information on the Advertising Council Archives, see http://web.library.uiuc.edu/ahx/adcouncil (and list of holdings at http://web.library.uiuc.edu/ahx/adcouncil/holdings.html), or contact the staff in the University Archives (listed above). |
