University Archivist
Suggested digital primary source collections
- Archives Photograph CollectionThe University Archives holds millions of photographic images so even at 83,000+, this site is just a fraction of our photographic holdings. However, it is regularly updated and a great place to start your photographic search!
- Indiana Limestone Photograph CollectionThis is a stunning collection of over 25,000 photographs from the Indiana Limestone Company. The coverage is really broad but there's some gorgeous IU, Bloomington, and Monroe County images.
- Indiana University Board of Trustees MinutesCreated by the Indiana General Assembly in 1820, the Board of Trustees is Indiana University's governing board, legal owner, and final authority. The minutes from the Board of Trustees meetings include official acts, resolutions, policies, agreements, personnel actions, and other business records pertaining to the governance of Indiana University. This web site allows for full-text search and browsing and is updated with new meeting minutes as they are processed. To see the full coverage to-date, browse the minutes by year.
- IU Archives OnlineThis site is a portal for accessing descriptions of special Collections and archives - ones chiefly containing materials other than books - from libraries, archives, and other units at Indiana University Bloomington and from a few other institutions around the state of Indiana. As descriptions of items in such collections, such as correspondence, diaries, photographs, and audiovisual materials, do not generally appear in IUCAT (IU's online catalog), Archives Online at IU offers access to these detailed collection guides to assist you in determining the content of a collection and whether it will fulfill your research needs. Archives Online at IU includes a variety of different types of collection descriptions (also called finding aids) with various levels of detail. In addition, collection guides may include links to digital images of items in the collections. Some collections are digitized entirely; others only partially, and some not at all.
- Archives Online - NEWWe are in the process of migrating to a new system and have added several other IU repositories. Use this site for a broader search BUT know that you will not find any digitized materials here, you will need to contact the appropriate repository.
- Digital CollectionsSome of the digitized content from Legacy Archives Online is now displaying here PLUS you can find some newly digitized content. However, this is still very much a work in progress, both in the way things display and what has been migrated. What's great, though, is that typed documents are full text searchable!
- Hoosier State ChroniclesHoosier State Chronicles is operated by the Indiana State Library and funded by the U.S. Institute of Museum and Library Services under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act. We seek to provide free, online access to high quality digital images of Indiana's historic newspapers by digitizing our collection, and assisting other organizations in making their collections digitally available.
- NewspaperArchiveThe NewspaperArchive subscription provided by IU provides digital access to more than 1000 historical newspapers from communities within Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, Michigan, Ohio, and Wisconsin.
You can find the IDS from 1867-1923 here; after that, you have to hit the microfilm on the 2nd floor of the Wells Library in Government Information, Maps, and Microforms Services. Just ask at the GIMMS desk and they can help you! - Newspapers.com World CollectionThe Newspapers.com World Collection contains full runs and portions of runs of well-known, regional and state titles in addition to small local newspapers.
- Indiana State Library Digital CollectionsThe continuously growing digital collections of the Indiana State Library. The digital collections include government documents, oral histories, letters, diaries, trade catalogs, photographs, and other materials.
- Indiana MemoryIndiana Memory is a collaborative effort to provide access to the wealth of primary sources in Indiana libraries, archives, museums, and other cultural institutions. It is a gateway to Indiana's history and culture found in digitized books, manuscripts, photographs, newspapers, maps, and other media. As a portal to the collections, Indiana Memory assists individuals to locate materials relevant to their interests and to better appreciate the connections between those materials.
- Ancestry Library Edition
This link opens in a new window
Did you know you have access to Ancestry through the IU Libraries? Yes!
In addition to searching for your individual, you have access to a near complete run of the IU yearbook (Arbutus) through Ancestry. To locate: Scroll to bottom of Ancestry home page->Schools, Directories & Church Histories->School Lists & Yearbooks->U.S., School Yearbooks, 1900-2016-> Indiana-Bloomington-Indiana University. Voila! Complete run through 1979 then gets spotty.
- ArbutusCan't find the yearbook you need above? Check this site, maintained by The Arbutus. Still incomplete, but has better coverage of 1970-2000s