Special Collections Research Center Guide: Online Collections and Resources

Check out the "From the Archives" playlist on our YouTube page for digitized films from our collections about SIU and southern Illinois history and culture.

This Morris Library guide has an extensive list of online primary source collections, which is useful if SCRC collections are unrelated to your research. The sources here include general resources, newspaper databases, and resources covering Illinois, North America, Africa, Asia and Oceania, Europe, Middle East, and South and Latin America. Some sources, such as those from the Library of Congress, are also linked under Other Resources below.

This Libguide highlights SCRC's Reclaiming African American History in Southern Illinois project. It contains information about archival collections (manuscripts, documents, etc.), digital collections, and rare books available through Morris Library.

This links to the Special Collections Research Center webpage listing our digital collections. The collections are primarily photographs, audio and video material, and printed materials related to our collecting areas listed in the About SCRC page.

Several of our digitized volumes can be found on the Internet Archive. These include SIU commencement programs, SIU Board of Trustee annual reports, the university's Obelisk and Obelisk II yearbooks, the University School's Mummy Case and Tower yearbooks, University News Service press releases, the Open Court Journal, and other printed material. Searching the Internet Archive can be tricky, so using the Year limiter on the left or browsing by title is recommended. Once you have clicked on and are "inside" a volume, use the magnifying glass icon on the left to search the volume's text.

Check out Special Collection's virtual exhibits here. Like our digital collections, the exhibits contain primary sources but they are presented in a thematic and narrative way like an exhibit. You will find exhibits on the history of Southern Illinois; Cricket Magazine; American, Irish, British, and German Theater of the Twentieth Century; the legacy of SIU's Health Education Department; and more!

This is the World Cat equivalent for archives and manuscripts collections. Searching a person's or organization's name (as well as topical searches), will help you discover collections in repositories throughout the world. Use quotations (") to search words as phrases. Search results will give you a collection name and description, contact information for the repository, and links to related materials.

Digital collections of audio and video recordings, writings, and images collected by the division of the Library of Congress that "documents and shares the many expressions of human experience to inspire, revitalize, and perpetuate living cultural traditions." Prominently featured are folk songs, nursery rhymes, folktales, and oral history interviews.

Free online resource providing access to more 2,000 historical American newspapers from the Library of Congress spanning 1770-1963.

Guide to the Library of Congress' massive digital collection, which contains hundreds of thousands of items from all corners of the world in hundreds of languages.

This portal to the Library of Congress' research centers provides access to a wide range of sources covering not only the United States but Europe, Africa, Asia, Latin American, and the Middle East as well. Here you will find digital collections of film, photographs, newspapers, maps, manuscripts, audio, and printed material.

Research guides to the Library's collections, organized by subject or research center. The guides provide summary information about the subjects, links to primary and secondary sources, and links to other online resources.

Digital collections of film selected from the Library of Congress' 1.9 million film, television, and video items. With a collection ranging from motion pictures made in the 1890s to today's TV programs, the Library's holdings are an unparalled record of American and international creativity in moving images.

The Recorded Sound Research Center provides access to the commercial and archival audio holdings of the Library of Congress. Here you will find digitized audio of selected sound recordings from the Library’s extensive collection of music, spoken word, and radio broadcasts. The collection includes most musical genres with particular strength in opera, chamber music, folk, jazz, musical theater, popular, and classical.

SNAC is a powerful tool for locating primary sources created by people, families, and corporate entities. Select the creator type and search the name. Use the Resources tab to see if the name is the "creatorOf" a source or "referencedIn" a different collection, and where that collection is located. Use the Relationships tab to see other individuals or corporate entities your searched name "correspondedWith" or is "associatedWith" and where those collections are located.