Illinois History and Lincoln Collections

(Illinois Historical Survey and Lincoln Room)

 

RELOCATION and ACCESS

The Library's Illinois History and Lincoln Collections were recently relocated. Users should now come to Library 422.

Printed materials in the Illinois History and Lincoln Collections are cataloged in the UIUC Library Online Catalog. These materials are shelved in a section of the main stacks, which users will be able to browse directly as soon as the library completes the passage or corridor to that area. Meanwhile, it is necessary for users to wait a few minutes for a member of the staff to fetch what they want.

Manuscript collections are stored in the main stacks but are retrieved for research use in Library 422. The unit's holdings, now divided between the Illinois History Collections and Lincoln Collections, will, in time, be merged and more fully described. For information, E-mail: IHLC@library.uiuc.edu.

Hours: Mon.-Fri., noon - 5pm
Telephone: (217) 333-1777
Mailing Address: 422 Library 1408 West Gregory Drive Urbana, IL 61801

The unit is staffed each weekday afternoon by a graduate assistant and by the unit head (John Hoffmann). As a rule, the unit is also open each weekday morning. The unit head is usually available to assist users at that time. Contact him to confirm his availability on any particular morning (contact information above), or simply come to Library 426 (next door to Library 422).

 

SCOPE

The collections contain approximately 25,000 volumes, 2,000 cubic feet of manuscripts, and a large number of maps, broadsides, prints and photographs, artifacts, and ephemera.  Researchers benefit substantially from the advice and suggestions of a staff which is familiar with these materials, with their inner connections, and with Illinois history and Lincoln studies as a whole.

 

HISTORY

For many years, the collections were located in two separate units, the Illinois Historical Survey and the Lincoln Room, each with a history of its own.

The University created the Survey in 1909, and for three decades it functioned as the editorial office of the Illinois State Historical Library in Springfield.  It mainly collected materials of use in the preparation of the Centennial History of Illinois, a multi-volume study, and the Illinois Historical Collections, a documentary series.  These publications, written or edited by University faculty, essentially created the field of Illinois history.  (This accomplishment is commemorated by the bronze plaque that stands at the north entrance to the Library.)

After 1939, when the state historical agency was consolidated in Springfield, the Survey became fully a unit of the Graduate College.  As such, it continued to expand its holdings in the field of Illinois history and to define the study of the state's past.

In 1966, the unit was moved from Lincoln Hall, where it was affiliated with the Department of History, to the Library, where, by serving an increasing number of users from many departments, it grew into a distinctly interdisciplinary "departmental library."  In 1980, the Survey became an administrative part of the Library under terms of an Agreement with the Graduate College whereby the Library promised the independence and integrity of the Survey.

In 1951, the collection which formed the nucleus of the Lincoln Room was donated to the University by Harlan Hoyt Horner and Henrietta Calhoun Horner, both graduates and both Lincoln scholars.  The Horners also established an endowment to enlarge the holdings of the Lincoln Room and to maintain it as a separate, distinct part of the Library.

The collections of the Lincoln Room and the Survey, being so closely related, were combined in 2001.  The librarian and curator of the Survey, who advocated this combination, became also the librarian and curator of the Lincoln Room. For many topics, the combination of the two units significantly enhanced the research value of the separate holdings.


CURRENT

Writing on September 28 and again on November 14, 2007, a planning committee of the Library, chaired by the University Librarian, put forward a proposal to scatter the Illinois History and Lincoln Collections of the Survey and Lincoln Room. On April 21, 2008, however, the committee posted on the Library website its Final Report and Recommendations, one of which preserves the unit. Indeed, it holds out the possibility of relocating the present public space of the unit from the fourth to the third floor of the Library.

The committee's report does not point out that this change would put users and staff next to the collections, as they were before 2006. In fact, if a door is made between the proposed reading space and the present stacks, users will again be able to browse the printed collection. Moreover, the unit will again be able to circulate "non-rare" printed material, as it did when the Survey was first moved to the Library.