Skip to Main Content

Illinois: State Resource Guide

Digital Collections

The digital collections of the Library of Congress contain a wide variety of primary source materials related to Illinois, including books, government documents, manuscripts, maps, motion pictures, photographs, sheet music, and sound recordings. Provided below is a link to the home page for each relevant digital collection along with selected highlights.

Written materials in the Library's digital collections include books, government documents, manuscripts, and sheet music. Examples of written materials related to Illinois are provided for most of the collections listed below.

Abraham Lincoln Papers at the Library of Congress

The complete Abraham Lincoln Papers at the Library of Congress consists of approximately 20,000 documents. Search the collection to find items related to Illinois, including a Resolution recommending enlargement of Illinois and Michigan Canal.

A selection of highlights from this collection includes:

African American Perspectives: Materials Selected from the Rare Book Collection

The 800 + titles in the collection include sermons on racial pride and political activism; annual reports of charitable, educational, and political organizations; and college catalogs and graduation orations from the Hampton Institute, Morgan College, and Wilberforce University. The collection contains seven items for Illinois.

A selection of highlights from this collection includes:

Alan Lomax Collection

The Alan Lomax Collection includes ethnographic field documentation, materials from Lomax's various projects, and cross-cultural research created and collected by Alan Lomax and others on traditional song, music, dance, and body movement from around the world. Search the collection on Illinois to find items pertaining to Illinois.

Alexander Graham Bell Family Papers at the Library of Congress

The collection contains over 145,000 items. The online version contains 4,695 items (equaling about 51,500 images), consists of correspondence, scientific notebooks, journals, blueprints, articles, and photographs documenting Bell's invention of the telephone and his involvement in the first telephone company, his family life, his interest in the education of the deaf, and his aeronautical and other scientific research.

A selection of highlights from this collection includes:

The Alfred Whital Stern Collection of Lincolniana

The collection contains more than 11,100 items. This online release presents more than 1,300 items with more than 4,000 images and a date range of 1824-1931. It includes the complete collection of Stern's contemporary newspapers, Lincoln's law papers, sheet music, broadsides, prints, cartoons, maps, drawings, letters, campaign tickets, and other ephemeral items. The collection contains more than 400 items for Illinois.

A selection of highlights from this collection includes:

America Singing: Nineteenth-Century Song Sheets

Contains 4291 song sheets. Included among these American songs are ninety-seven British song sheets from Dublin and London. The collection spans the period from the turn of the nineteenth century to the 1880s, although a majority of the song sheets were published during the height of the craze, from the 1850s to the 1870s. The collection contains three song sheets for Illinois.

Selected highlight from this collection:

An American Ballroom Companion: Dance Instruction Manuals, ca. 1490 to 1920

A collection of over two hundred social dance manuals at the Library of Congress. The list begins with a rare late fifteenth-century source, Les basses danses de Marguerite d'Autriche (c.1490) and ends with Ella Gardner's 1929 Public dance halls, their regulation and place in the recreation of adolescents. The collection contains nine items pertaining to Illinois.

Selected highlight from this collection:

American Life Histories: Manuscripts from the Federal Writers' Project, 1936 to 1940

The collection includes 2,900 documents representing the work of over 300 writers from 24 states. The histories describe the informant's family education, income, occupation, political views, religion and mores, medical needs, diet and miscellaneous observations. Pseudonyms are often substituted for individuals and places named in the narrative texts. Included in the collection are 75 titles of mostly first-person accounts of life in Illinois during the Great Depression.

American Notes: Travels in America, 1750 to 1920

This collection comprises 253 published narratives by Americans and foreign visitors recounting their travels in the colonies and the United States and their observations and opinions about American peoples, places, and society from about 1750 to 1920. The collection contains seven narratives for Illinois.

Selected highlight from this collection:

Baseball Sheet Music

This presentation features 147 items of sheet music that reference baseball from the late nineteenth century to the early twentieth century. Many of the items shown represent the earliest widely-distributed baseball collectibles; the value of these objects lies both in their music and lyrics as well as in their elaborately illustrated covers, which furnish a factual and cultural history of our national game, its fans and their heroes. The collection contains more than twenty pieces of sheet music for Illinois.

A selection of highlights from this collection includes:

Case Books

Consists of more than 2,200 books and serials spanning the period 1550 to the present, with most published between 1840 and 1970. Illustrations are the featured aspect of these works, and many of the volumes contain original visual materials such as engravings, woodcuts, lithographs, fine photogravures, and photographic prints.

Selected highlight from this collection:

A Century of Lawmaking for a New Nation: U.S. Congressional Documents and Debates, 1774-1875

A Century of Lawmaking for a New Nation consists of a linked set of published congressional records of the United States of America from the Continental Congress through the 43rd Congress, 1774-1875. Search the collection on the word "Illinois" to locate items related to Illinois.

Civil War Sheet Music Collection

The Civil War Sheet Music Collection at the Library of Congress consists of over 2500 pieces culled from the Library's collections. The collection contains more than twenty pieces of sheet music for Illinois.

A selection of highlights from this collection includes:

Code of Federal Regulations

The Code of Federal Regulations (C.F.R.) is "the codification of the general and permanent rules by the department and agencies of the Federal Government." This is a historical collection of the Code of Federal Regulations dating from 1938 - 1995. To access the Code of Regulations from 1996 - present, please visit the Government Publishing Office site, GovInfo. Search the collection on Illinois to locate more than 100 items pertaining to Illinois.

A selection of highlights from this collection includes:

Federal Theatre Project, 1935 to 1939

This online presentation includes items selected from the Federal Theatre Project Collection at the Library of Congress. Featured here are stage and costume designs, photographs, posters, playbills, programs, and playscripts, including productions of Macbeth and The Tragical History of Dr. Faustus as staged by Orson Welles, and Power, a topical drama of the period. Browse the collection by location to locate more than thirty items pertaining to Illinois.

Frederick Douglass Papers at the Library of Congress

The papers of nineteenth-century African American abolitionist Frederick Douglass (1818-1895), who escaped from slavery and then risked his freedom by becoming an outspoken antislavery lecturer, writer, and publisher, consist of approximately 7,400 items (38,000 images), most of which were digitized from 34 reels of previously produced microfilm. Browse the collection by location to locate more than twenty items for Illinois.

Frontline Diplomacy: The Foreign Affairs Oral History Collection of the Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training

Frontline Diplomacy: The Foreign Affairs Oral History Collection of the Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training at the Library of Congress makes available interview transcripts from the oral history archives of the Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training (ADST). The collection contains more than ten interview transcripts for Illinois.

Hannah Arendt Papers

The papers of author, educator, political philosopher, and public intellectual Hannah Arendt (1906-1975) constitute a large and diverse collection (25,000 items; 82,597 images) reflecting a complex career. The collection spans the years 1898 to 1977, with the bulk of the material beginning in 1948, three years before Arendt's naturalization as an American citizen.

Selected highlight from this collection:

Historic Sheet Music Collection, 1800 to 1922

This sheet music collection consists of approximately 9,000 items published from 1800 to 1922, although the majority is from 1850 to 1920 [view finding aid for the collection]. The collection contains nine pieces of sheet music for Illinois.

A selection of highlights from this collection includes:

James Madison Papers, 1723 to 1859

James Madison (1751-1836) is one of 23 presidents whose papers are held in the Manuscript Division of the Library of Congress. The Madison Papers consist of approximately 12,000 items, spanning the period 1723-1859, captured in some 37,714 digital images. The collection contains seven items pertaining to Illinois.

A selection of highlights from this collection includes:

Mary Church Terrell Papers

The papers of educator, lecturer, suffragist, and civil rights activist Mary Church Terrell (1863-1954) consist of approximately 13,000 documents, comprising 25,323 images, all of which were digitized from 34 reels of previously produced microfilm.

A selection of highlights from this collection includes:

Music for the Nation: American Sheet Music, ca. 1820 to 1860

Consists of over 15,000 pieces of sheet music registered for copyright during the years 1820 to 1860. The collection contains six pieces of sheet music for Illinois.

Music for the Nation: American Sheet Music, ca. 1870 to 1885

Consists of over 47,000 pieces of sheet music registered for copyright during the years 1870 to 1885. Included are popular songs, piano music, sacred and secular choral music, solo instrumental music, method books and instructional materials, and music for band and orchestra. The collection contains more than 1,000 pieces of sheet music for Illinois.

National American Woman Suffrage Association Records

The records of the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA) span the years from 1839 to 1961 but are most numerous for the period 1890 to 1930. The collection consists of approximately 26,700 items (52,078 images), most of which were digitized from 73 microfilm reels. The collection contains four items pertaining to Illinois.

A selection of highlights from this collection includes:

Olmsted Associates Records

The digitized portion of the Olmsted Associates Records consist of approximately 149,000 items (366,518 images), scanned from 532 reels of microfilm reproducing the two largest series in the collection, the Letterbooks, 1884-1899, and Job Files, 1863-1971, which document the work of the Brookline, Massachusetts, landscape architectural firm and its widespread projects and commissions undertaken for private and public clients in the United States and Canada.

Selected highlight from this collection:

Open Access Books

This is a growing collection of contemporary open access e-books. The books in this collection cover a wide range of subjects, including history, music, poetry, technology, and works of fiction. Most of the books in this collection were published in English, but there are some titles in other languages. All of the books in this collection were published under open access licenses and may be read online or downloaded as a PDF or as an EPUB.

Selected highlight from this collection:

Pioneering the Upper Midwest: Books from Michigan, Minnesota, and Wisconsin, ca. 1820 to 1910

This collection portrays the states of Michigan, Minnesota and Wisconsin from the seventeenth to the early twentieth century through first-person accounts, biographies, promotional literature, local histories, ethnographic and antiquarian texts, colonial archival documents, and other works drawn from the Library of Congress's General Collections and Rare Books and Special Collections Division. The collection contains three items pertaining to Illinois.

Printed Ephemera: Three Centuries of Broadsides and Other Printed Ephemera

The collection contains, among other materials, posters, playbills, songsheets, notices, invitations, proclamations, petitions, timetables, leaflets, propaganda, manifestos, ballots, tickets, menus, and business cards. There are more than 28,000 items in the collection with 10,172 available online. The material dates from the seventeenth century to the present day and covers innumerable topics. Browse the collection by location to locate more than 300 items for Illinois.

Prosperity and Thrift: The Coolidge Era and the Consumer Economy, 1921-1929

Prosperity and Thrift assembles a wide array of Library of Congress source materials from the 1920s that document the widespread prosperity of the Coolidge years, the nation's transition to a mass consumer economy, and the role of government in this transition. The collection includes a 1930 pamphlet which publishes a collection of informal talks given by farm women at the Household Science Meeting held by the Illinois Farmers' Institute around 1930, relating women's successes in founding and maintaining farm-related businesses.

A selection of highlights from this collection includes:

Rare Book Selections

The collections housed in The Rare Book and Special Collections Division amount to nearly 800,000 books, encompassing nearly all eras and subjects maintained in well over 100 separate collections. All of these collections offer scholarly documentation about the western and American traditions of life and learning. The collection contains more than ten items for Illinois.

Selected Digitized Books

This is a growing collection of selected books and other materials from the Library of Congress General Collections that can be made openly available. Most of the materials in this collection were published in the United States and are in English. The collection features thousands of works of fiction, including books intended for children, young adults, and other audiences. The collection contains more than 170 digitized books for Illinois.

A selection of highlights from this collection includes:

Sheet Music of the Musical Theater

Sheet Music of the Musical Theater is a collection of more than 16,000 pieces of sheet music published between 1880 and 1922.

A selection of highlights from this collection includes:

Slaves and the Courts, 1740 to 1860

This collection consists of 105 library books and manuscripts, totalling approximately 8,700 pages drawn principally from the Law Library and the Rare Book and Special Collections Division of the Library of Congress, with a few from the General Collections. The collection contains four items pertaining to Illinois.

Thomas Jefferson Papers, 1606 to 1827

The papers of Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826), diplomat, architect, scientist, and third president of the United States, held in the Library of Congress Manuscript Division, consist of approximately 25,000 items, making it the largest collection of original Jefferson documents in the world.

Selected highlight from this collection:

U.S. Telephone Directory Collection

The Library of Congress's collection of telephone directories represents the following states and localities: Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, the District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Iowa, Maryland, Pennsylvania, and the city of Chicago. The collection contains more than 190 items for Illinois.

Selected highlight from this collection:

United States Reports (Official opinions of the U.S. Supreme Court)

The United States Reports is a series of bound case reporters that are the official reports of decisions for the Supreme Court of the United States. A citation to a U. S. Supreme Court decision includes several elements that are needed to retrieve the case. The collection contains more than 500 items for Illinois.

William H. Taft Papers

The papers of William Howard Taft (1857-1930), twenty-seventh president of the United States and tenth chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, consist of approximately 676,000 documents (785,977 images), which have been digitized from 658 reels of previously reproduced microfilm.

Selected highlight from this collection:

World War I Sheet Music

From 1914 through 1920 the Library of Congress acquired over 14,000 pieces of sheet music relating to what ultimately became known as the First World War, with the greatest number coming from the years of the United States' active involvement (1917-1918) and the immediate postwar period. Browse the collection by location to locate more than 2,900 pieces of sheet music for Illinois.

World War II Rumor Project

The World War II Rumor Project collection contains manuscript materials compiled by the Office of War Information (OWI). The collection contains more than items for Illinois.

A selection of highlights from this collection includes:

The visual material collections at the Library of Congress contains thousands of images documenting the history of Illinois. Selected images of Illinois are provided for each collection listed below. Search on terms such as or names of cities, towns, and sites, etc. to locate additional images.

African American Photographs Assembled for 1900 Paris Exposition

The Paris Exposition of 1900 (Exposition universelle internationale de 1900) devoted a building to matters of "social economy." The United States section of the building featured an exhibit that, according to W. E. B. Du Bois, attempted to show "(a) The history of the American Negro. (b) His present condition. (c) His education. (d) His literature."

Selected highlight from this collection:

Architecture, Design & Engineering Drawings

The Architecture, Design, and Engineering category covers about 40,000 drawings (described in more than 3,900 catalog records), spanning 1600 to 1989, with most dating between 1880 and 1940. The designs are primarily for sites and structures in the U.S. (especially Washington, D.C.), as well as Europe and Mexico. Browse the collection by location to locate more than thirty drawings for Illinois.

Bain Collection

The George Grantham Bain Collection represents the photographic files of one of America's earliest news picture agencies. The collection richly documents sports events, theater, celebrities, crime, strikes, disasters, political activities including the woman suffrage campaign, conventions and public celebrations. The collection contains more than ten items for Illinois.

Baseball Cards

This collection consists of 2,100 early baseball cards dating from 1887 to 1914. The baseball cards for the Chicago Cubs, Chicago Maroons, Chicago White Sox and Chicago White Stockings are included in this collection.

Brady-Handy Collection

In 1954 the Library of Congress purchased from Alice H. Cox and Mary H. Evans, the daughters of Levin C. Handy approximately 10,000 original, duplicate, and copy negatives. The L.C. Handy Studio had been located at 494 Maryland Avenue SW, Washington, DC. Levin C. Handy (1855?-1932) was apprenticed at the age of twelve to his uncle, famed Civil War photographer Mathew B. Brady (1823?-1896). The collection contains more than five items for Illinois.

A selection of highlights from this collection includes:

By Popular Demand: Jackie Robinson and Other Baseball Highlights, 1860s-1960s

This online presentation introduces a multi-faceted man and a variety of complex issues, topics, and events that risk oversimplification in any short retelling.

Selected highlight from this collection:

Cabinet of American Illustration

Contains more than four thousand original drawings by American book, magazine, and newspaper illustrators, made primarily between 1880 and 1910. The collection includes illustrations for magazines, novels, and children's books; cartoons; cover designs; and sketches for posters. The collection contains five items for Illinois.

Selected highlight from this collection:

Cartoon Drawings

Offers more than 9,000 original drawings for editorial cartoons, caricatures, and comic strips spanning the late 1700s to the present, primarily from 1880 to 1980. The cartoons cover people and events throughout the world, but most of the images were intended for publication in American newspapers and magazines. Browse the collection by location to locate three drawings for Illinois.

Cartoon Drawings: Herblock Collection

Herbert L. Block (1909-2001), known to the world as Herblock, was one of the most influential political commentators and editorial cartoonists in American history. His long chronicle of major social and political events began to appear in newspapers in 1929, and he continued to document domestic and international events for 72 years. The bulk of the 14,000 original ink and graphite drawings in the Library of Congress Prints & Photographs Division date from 1946 through 2001, when Herblock worked for the Washington Post. Approximately 1,300 drawings represent his earlier work for the Chicago Daily News and the Newspaper Enterprise Association. The collection contains more than five cartoon drawings for Illinois.

Cartoon Prints, American

This assemblage of more than 800 prints made in America during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries encompasses several forms of political art. Most of the prints are from the division's PC/US series, which consists of individually cataloged political cartoons and caricatures. Browse the collection by location to locate eight prints for Illinois.

A selection of highlights from this collection includes:

Chicago Ethnic Arts Project Collection

The collection consists of approximately 344 sound recordings, 14,141 photographs, 269 folders of manuscript materials, 2 videorecordings, publications, ephemera, administrative files, and field notes produced and collected during the 1977 Chicago Ethnic Arts Project field survey from 1976-1981; but primarily during fieldwork conducted by fourteen folklorists directed by the American Folklife Center in 1977.

Civil War

Explore the faces, places and events of the U.S. Civil War through photographs, prints and drawings. Browse the collection by location to locate more than thirty images for Illinois.

A selection of highlights from this collection includes:

Civil War Glass Negatives and Related Prints

Provides access to about 7,000 different views and portraits made during the American Civil War (1861-1865) and its immediate aftermath. The collection contains four images of Illinois.

Detroit Publishing Company

The photographs from the Detroit Publishing Company Collection include more than 25,000 glass negatives and transparencies as well as about 300 color photolithograph prints, mostly of the eastern United States. The Illinois-related photographs of this collection include various nature views of the Fox River, Chicago River and Lincoln Park as well as images of Chicago landmarks such as State Street, Newberry Library, University of Chicago and more.

Drawings (Documentary)

The Documentary Drawings category includes more than 3,000 drawings made between 1750 and 1970. Eye-witness sketches made during the U.S. Civil War are the most frequently used images. Also included are topographical views, bank note vignettes, portraits, and courtroom sketches. A large group of Russian drawings show areas of China in the 1800s. The collection contains more than ten drawings of Illinois.

Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information Black-and-White Negatives

The images in the Farm Security Administration-Office of War Information Collection are among the most famous documentary photographs ever produced. Created by a group of U.S. government photographers, the images show Americans in every part of the nation. The collection contains more than 4,000 images of Illinois during this period.

Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information Color Photographs

Photographers working for the U.S. government's Farm Security Administration (FSA) and later the Office of War Information (OWI) between 1939 and 1944 made approximately 1,600 color photographs that depict life in the United States, including Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands. The pictures focus on rural areas and farm labor, as well as aspects of World War II mobilization, including factories, railroads, aviation training, and women working. The collection contains more than 140 images of Illinois.

Fine Prints

About 85,000 prints created as art works, ca. 1450-present (most dating between 1800 and the present). Prints by American printmakers and artists (e.g., Paul Revere, Mary Cassatt, Jim Dine, Joseph Pennell) predominate, but creators in many other countries are also represented (e.g., Albrecht Dürer and Marc Chagall). Subjects vary widely, for example, portraits, religious themes, historical events, and street scenes. The collection contains ten prints for Illinois.

A selection of highlights from this collection includes:

Gottscho-Schleisner Collection

The collection of more than 45,000 items (negatives, transparencies and prints) came to the Library of Congress in the early 1980s. The online collection provides access to 29,000 negatives and color transparencies. The collection contains nine items for Illinois.

Highsmith (Carol M.) Archive

Photographs of landmark buildings and architectural renovation projects in Washington, D.C., and throughout the United States. The first 23 groups of photographs contain more than 2,500 images and date from 1980 to 2005, with many views in color as well as black-and-white. Browse the collection by location to locate more than 1,100 images of Illinois.

Historic American Buildings Survey/Historic American Engineering Record/Historic American Landscapes Survey

The images in this collection document achievements in architecture, engineering, and design in the United States and its territories through a comprehensive range of building types and engineering technologies. The collection contains more than 900 records relating to buildings throughout the state of Illinois.

Johnston (Frances Benjamin) Collection

Images in the collection span the period, 1850-1949, but the majority date between 1897 and 1927. Among the photographs from Johnston's early career are her coverage of American world's fairs; coal mining; the White House; openings of Congress; Admiral Dewey; and Progressive era educational efforts, including a survey of Washington, D.C., schools and such minority educational institutions as the Hampton Institute and the Tuskegee Institute. Browse the collection by location to locate more than twenty images of Illinois.

A selection of highlights from this collection includes:

Liljenquist Family Collection of Civil War Photographs

More than 5,000 special portrait photographs, called ambrotypes and tintypes, and small card photos called cartes de visite represent both Union and Confederate soldiers during the American Civil War (1861-1865). The collection contains more than twenty photographs for Illinois.

A selection of highlights from this collection includes:

Look Collection

The Look Magazine Photograph Collection is a vast photographic archive created to illustrate Look Magazine and related publications produced by companies founded by Gardner Cowles. The collection contains more than 100 photographs for Illinois.

National Child Labor Committee Collection

The collection consists of more than 5,100 photographic prints and 355 glass negatives, given to the Library of Congress, along with the NCLC records, in 1954 by Mrs. Gertrude Folks Zimand, acting for the NCLC in her capacity as chief executive. The collection contains five items for Illinois.

National Photo Company Collection

This collection documents virtually all aspects of Washington, D.C., life. During the administrations of Presidents Wilson, Harding, Coolidge, and Hoover, the National Photo Company supplied photographs of current news events in Washington, D.C., as a daily service to its subscribers. Browse the collection by location to locate seven photographs of Illinois.

A selection of highlights from this collection includes:

Panoramic Photographs

The Panoramic Photograph Collection contains approximately 4,000 images featuring American cityscapes, landscapes, and group portraits. More than 200 images in this collection represent rural, small-town and city life throughout Illinois.

A selection of highlights from this collection includes:

PH Filing Series Photographs

Covers more than 2,500 original, individually cataloged photographic prints and more than 100 portfolios containing sets of prints created between the 1840s and the present. The collection contains five items for Illinois.

Photochrom Prints

Contains almost 6,000 views of Europe and the Middle East and 500 views of North America. Browse the collection by location to locate ten prints for Illinois.

A selection of highlights from this collection includes:

Popular Graphic Arts

About 15,000 historical prints (ca. 1700-1900) created to document geographic locations or popular subjects and sometimes used for advertising and educational purposes. Most are by American printmakers (e.g., Baillie, Currier & Ives, Sachse & Co.), but publishers in many other countries are also represented (e.g., Antonio Vanegas Arroyo). The collection contains more than thirty historical prints for Illinois.

A selection of highlights from this collection includes:

Posters: Artist Posters

The online Artist Posters consist of a small but growing proportion of the more than 85,000 posters in the Artist Poster filing series. Browse the collection by location to locate more than ten posters for Illinois.

A selection of highlights from this collection includes:

Posters: WPA Posters

This collection consists of 908 boldly colored and graphically diverse original posters produced from 1936 to 1943 as part of Franklin Delano Roosevelt's New Deal. The collection contains more than 130 posters for Illinois.

Selected highlight from this collection:

Posters: Yanker Poster Collection

The Yanker Poster Collection includes more than 3,000 political, propaganda, and social issue posters and handbills, dating 1927-1980. The collection contains more than ten posters for Illinois.

Quilts and Quiltmaking in America, 1978 to 1996

Contains 181 segments from recorded interviews with quiltmakers and 410 graphic images (prints, positive transparencies, and negatives) from two collections in the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress: the Blue Ridge Parkway Folklife Project Collection (AFC 1982/00) and the Lands' End All-American Quilt Contest Collection (AFC 1997/011). The collection contains four items for Illinois.

A selection of highlights from this collection includes:

Stereograph Cards

Stereographs consist of two nearly identical photographs or photomechanical prints, paired to produce the illusion of a single three-dimensional image, usually when viewed through a stereoscope. The collection contains more than 500 stereographs for Illinois.

Women of Protest: Photographs from the Records of the National Woman's Party

This collection includes 448 digitized photographs selected from approximately 2,650 print photographs in the Records of the National Woman's Party, a collection of more than 438,000 items, housed in the Manuscript Division of the Library of Congress. The collection contains more than twenty photographs of Illinois.

The Library of Congress has custody of the largest and most comprehensive cartographic collection in the world with collections numbering over 5.5 million maps, 80,000 atlases, 6,000 reference works, over 500 globes and globe gores, 3,000 raised relief models, and a large number of cartographic materials in other formats, including over 19,000 CDs/DVDs.

Cities and Towns

This category includes maps that depict individual buildings to panoramic views of large urban areas. These maps record the evolution of cities illustrating the development and nature of economic activities, educational and religious facilities, parks, street patterns and widths, and transportation systems. The collection contains more than seventy maps of Illinois.

A selection of highlights from this collection includes:

Civil War Maps

This presentation contains approximately 2,240 Civil War maps and charts and 76 atlases and sketchbooks that are held within the Geography and Map Division, 200 maps from the Library of Virginia, and 400 maps from the Virginia Historical Society. Browse the collection by location to locate more than five maps for Illinois.

Selected highlight from this collection:

Panoramic Maps

The panoramic map was a popular cartographic form used to depict U.S. and Canadian cities and towns during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Known also as bird's-eye views, perspective maps, and aero views, panoramic maps are nonphotographic representations of cities portrayed as if viewed from above at an oblique angle. The collection contains more than sixty maps for Illinois.

A selection of highlights from this collection includes:

Sanborn Maps

The Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps Online Checklist provides a searchable database of the fire insurance maps published by the Sanborn Map Company housed in the collections of the Geography and Map Division. The online checklist is based upon the Library's 1981 publication Fire Insurance Maps in the Library of Congress and will be continually updated to reflect new acquisitions. Browse the collection by location to locate more than 1,800 maps for Illinois.

A selection of highlights from this collection includes:

Transportation and Communication

These maps document the development and status of transportation and communication systems on the national, state, and local level. Transportation maps can depict canal and river systems, cycling routes , railway lines and systems, roads and road networks, and traffic patterns. Communication maps illustrate the location and distribution of telegraph routes, telephone systems and radio coverage. Browse the collection by location to locate more than ten maps for Illinois.

A selection of highlights from this collection includes:

The Library oversees one of the largest collections of motion pictures in the world. Acquired primarily through copyright deposit, exchange, gift and purchase, the collection spans the entire history of the cinema. The following moving image collections contain materials related to Illinois.

America at Work, America at Leisure: Motion Pictures from 1894 to 1915

Work, school, and leisure activities in the United States from 1894 to 1915 are featured in this presentation of 150 motion pictures. Highlights include films of the United States Postal Service from 1903, cattle breeding, fire fighters, ice manufacturing, logging, calisthenic and gymnastic exercises in schools, amusement parks, boxing, expositions, football, parades, swimming, and other sporting events. Browse the collection by location to locate three films for Illinois.

Selected highlight from this collection:

Civil Rights History Project

On May 12, 2009, the U. S. Congress authorized a national initiative by passing The Civil Rights History Project Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-19). The law directed the Library of Congress (LOC) and the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC) to conduct a national survey of existing oral history collections with relevance to the Civil Rights movement to obtain justice, freedom and equality for African Americans and to record and make widely accessible new interviews with people who participated in the struggle. The project was initiated in 2010 with the survey and with interviews beginning in 2011. Browse the collection by location to locate four items for Illinois.

A selection of highlights from this collection includes:

Inventing Entertainment: The Motion Pictures and Sound Recordings of the Edison Companies

This collection features 341 motion pictures, 81 disc sound recordings, and other related materials, such as photographs and original magazine articles. The collection contains four items pertaining to Illinois.

A selection of highlights from this collection includes:

National Screening Room

The National Screening Room showcases the riches of the Library's vast moving image collection, designed to make otherwise unavailable movies, both copyrighted and in the public domain, accessible to the viewers worldwide. The majority of titles in the National Screening Room are freely available as both 5 mb MP4 and ProRes 422 MOV/Quicktime downloads. The collection contains nine items for Illinois.

The Library of Congress holds the nation's largest public collection of sound recordings (music and spoken word) and radio broadcasts, some 3 million recordings in all.

Alan Lomax Collection of Michigan and Wisconsin Recordings

The Alan Lomax collection of Michigan and Wisconsin recordings (AFC 1939/007) documents Irish, Italian, Finnish, Serbian, Lithuanian, Polish, German, Croatian, French Canadian, Hungarian, Romanian, and Swedish songs and stories, as well as occupational folklife among loggers and lake sailors in Michigan and Wisconsin. Browse the collection by location to locate more than five sound recordings for Illinois.

The Library of Congress Celebrates the Songs of America

The Songs of America presentation allows you to explore American history as documented in the work of some of our country's greatest composers, poets, scholars, and performers. From popular and traditional songs, to poetic art songs and sacred music, the relationship of song to historical events from the nation's founding to the present is highlighted through more than 80,000 online items. The collection contains more than 3,900 items pertaining to Illinois.

A selection of highlights from this collection includes:

National Jukebox

The Library of Congress presents the National Jukebox, which makes historical sound recordings available to the public free of charge. The Jukebox includes recordings from the extraordinary collections of the Library of Congress National Audio-Visual Conservation Center and other contributing libraries and archives.

A selection of highlights from this collection includes:

September 11, 2001 Documentary Project

The project captures the heartfelt reactions, eyewitness accounts, and diverse opinions of Americans and others in the months that followed the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and United Airlines Flight 93. There are 16 interviews in the collection of individuals from around Illinois.

A selection of highlights from this collection includes: