In this section, we have gathered information about Native American and Indigenous Studies and Native American and Indigenous Studies-adjacent archives, libraries, museums, and institutions in Bloomington and around the world. This box lists the majority of IU's physical archives, collections, libraries, and repositories along with information about ArchivesOnline. Below you will find information on local archival collections (in Bloomington and the Midwest), national archives, libraries & museums, and digital collections & databases.
Indiana University is home to world-renowned collections including those at Wells along with those held by the Lilly Library, Eskenazi Museum of Art, Archives of African American Music & Culture, Moving Image Archive, and more. Many of these repositories require an appointment, so be sure to contact a librarian or archivist before your visit. Along with physical collections, you also have access to primary sources though online databases and digital collections from libraries, museums, and archives around the world.
We encourage you to read about the history of and protocols for dealing with Indigenous archival materials at the links below:
Photo: Herman B Wells Library. IU Libraries Website. The Wells Library is home to the Black Film Center & Archives, University Archives, Moving Image Archive, and more.
You can browse many of the collections held by IU's libraries or our many world-famous archives and book repositories. Reach out to the librarians and archivists at specific repositories to get assistance with your research and/or set up a visit. Below you will find information about physical collections and archives at Indiana University, Bloomington. Many of these will have collections relevant to Gender Studies Research:
Repository | Who are they and what do they have? | How to access materials |
---|---|---|
Archives of African American Music and Culture (AAAMC) |
Established in 1991, the AAAMC is a repository of materials covering a range of African American musical idioms and cultural expressions from the post-World War II era. The collections highlight popular, religious, and classical music, with genres ranging from blues and gospel to R&B and contemporary hip hop. The AAAMC also houses extensive materials related to the documentation of Black radio. |
Collections in Archives Online |
(ATM) |
The ATM is an audiovisual archive that documents music and culture from all over the world. With over 110,000 recordings, it is one of the largest university-based ethnographic sound archives in the United States. The core of the collection consists of more than 3,000 field collections–unique and irreplaceable recordings collected by anthropologists, ethnomusicologists, and others. Some of the holdings' strengths include Native American, African, and Latin American music and spoken word, and large collections of early jazz and blues 78s. | |
(BFCA) |
The BFCA is the only center in the world dedicated entirely to the collection, preservation, curation, and programming of Black film. Since its founding in 1981, the BFCA has been proud to highlight and celebrate the contributions to film art and history made by people of African diasporic descent, as well as document the shifting ways that race and racism have been presented onscreen. | |
(Online) |
The Collections website brings together a compilation of Indiana University’s most valuable resources across all campuses. Peruse the website to obtain greater visibility into the rich history of our human cultural and scientific achievements. | |
Herman B Wells Library | Wells Library is the visual center of the multi-library system and primarily supports the disciplines of the humanities and social sciences. More than 4.6 million volumes are housed in the building. Especially noteworthy are collections supporting international and area studies, including ones developed in African Studies, Russian and East European Studies, Uralic and Altaic Studies, East Asian Studies, and West European Studies along with the extensive Folklore Collection. To find a book at Wells, locate its call number in IUCAT or talk to a Reference Librarian in the East Tower for assistance. | |
(IU Archives) |
The Indiana University Archives holds records related to students, faculty, alumni, and general culture or information about Indiana University. With an estimated 18,000 cubic feet of records and papers in all formats, the University Archives is the largest and most comprehensive source of information on the history and culture of Indiana University. Browse the collections online, or contact an archivist to find records related to your research or interests. | |
(IULMIA) |
The IULMIA is one of the world’s largest educational film and video collections. Containing more than 130,000 items spanning nearly 80 years of film production, the Archive also includes many rare and last-remaining copies of influential 20th-century films. Email iulmia@indiana.edu for an appointment. | |
Kinsey Institute Library & Special Collections | Maintains a research collection of unrivaled scope with manuscripts, data, materials, and papers from some of the world’s most influential sex researchers. The archives include the papers of Masters & Johnson, John Money, Harry Benjamin, and Thomas N. Painter, as well as the institutional records of the Society for the Scientific Study of Sexuality, the Albert Ellis archives, and the EROS magazine collection. |
Search the repository in IUCAT Email libknsy@indiana.edu for assistance |
Latin American Music Center & Archives | The Latin American Music Center collection is comprised of thousands of items and includes rare manuscripts, published scores, colonial music anthologies, sound recordings, books, dissertations, periodicals, microfilms, and miscellaneous documents such as letters and photographs. | |
Lilly Library | The Lilly Library is IU's principal rare books, manuscripts, and special collections library. Visit the library anytime to view special exhibitions and items on permanent display such as the New Testament of the Gutenberg Bible and the Slocum Puzzle Collection. Admission is always free and the library is open to everyone. | |
William and Gayle Cook Music Library (Music Library) |
Cook Music Library supports musical performance, teaching, learning, and research at Indiana University, primarily in the Jacobs School of Music. The strengths of the collection include: 19th-century first or early editions of orchestral, chamber, and opera sources; extensive holdings of printed operas; theory treatises from the Renaissance to the late 19th century; Russian/Soviet music; early keyboard and violin primary source materials; Black and Latin American music collections. |
Many of IU's archival holdings are searchable through Archives Online. Collections include records from Indiana University repositories. You can search across all collections or search within an individual collection. Once you select a collection to view, click "Entire Document" on the left of the screen to view the entire inventory of the collection.
A "Finding Aid" assists you in locating something in a collection. The "Title" of the collection and the "Collection No."are listed in the first portion of the finding aid. The "Collection No." is the identification marker that allows you to request a collection, along with the specific box numbers. Make sure to use finding aids to help you locate which boxes have materials of interest, often you are not able to request access to an entire collection.
For assistance using Archives Online, check out these videos:
Sometimes, scholarship does not go on to become a scholarly text in the form of an article or book. Consider consulting alternative academic sources, such as conference proceedings, seminars, abstracts, and theses and dissertations, which will allow you to find not only relevant scholarly work within the field, but in many cases will be more current than traditionally published sources. Keep in mind that these sources often do not undergo the same level of review as peer-reviewed work.
Explore the Grey Literature section of IU's Systematic Reviews & Evidence Based Reviews Guide to learn more about these sources.
Conference proceedings are compilations of papers, research, and information presented at conferences. Proceedings are sometimes peer-reviewed and are often the first publication of research that later appears in a scholarly publication. Proceedings are more commonly encountered (via databases and other searching) in science and engineering fields than in the arts and humanities.
The Government Printing Office disseminates information issued by all three branches of the government to federal depository libraries (including IU Libraries). Additionally, government departments publish reports, data, statistics, white papers, consumer information, transcripts of hearings, and more. Some information published by government offices is technical and scientific.
Theses and dissertations are the result of an individual student's research while in a graduate program. They are written under the guidance and review of an academic committee but are not considered "peer-reviewed" publications.
You won't always want, need, or be required to exclusively rely on academic sources in your research. In these cases, it is important to understand their provenance and scope and carefully evaluate them before usage. For more on source evaluation, use the navigation menu to the left.
This box contains materials relevant to Native American & Indigenous Studies held on the Bloomington campus of Indiana University. While many of these individual collections include digitized samples, contact the stewards of these repositories in order to inquire about access options.
Archives of Traditional Music (ATM)
The Archives of Traditional Music (ATM) is an audiovisual archive that documents music and culture from all over the world. With over 110,000 recordings that include more than 3,300 field collections, it is one of the largest university-based ethnographic sound archives in the United States. Its holdings cover a wide range of cultural and geographical areas, vocal and instrumental music, linguistic materials, folktales, interviews, and oral history, as well as videotapes, photographs, and manuscripts. The ATM and IU Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology were recently awarded a grant from the Library of Congress for their collaborative project, "Connecting Collections: Indigenous Identities in Edward Curtis and Joseph Dixon Materials." Read more about the project here.
Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology
From the secular to the sacred, the everyday to the extraordinary, the Indiana University Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology exhibits, curates, and studies the objects and experiences that make us human and tell the story of humanity. As part of Indiana University’s educational and research missions, they increase the accessibility of their research and collections in order to bring university, Indigenous, and public audiences together in a respectful dialogue that increases knowledge of the material world in the service of social justice and environmental stewardship. The IUMAA includes the collections of the Glenn A. Black Laboratory of Archaeology and the Mathers Museum of World Cultures, along with other relevant materials across the university.
Sidney and Lois Eskenazi Museum of Art
The Eskenazi Museum of Art’s Art of Africa, Oceania, and Indigenous Art of the Americas collection tells stories of hundreds of ethnic groups and cultures spread across four continents and the planet’s largest ocean. Some objects date from more than three thousand years ago, while others belong to practices that continue today. The oldest objects in the collection are part of the Indigenous Art of the Americas installation, which emphasizes the cultures of ancient Mesoamerica and Peru. The Indigenous Art of the Americas section also includes a small group of more recent Native North American artworks.
For more information about the history of Indigenous Peoples in Indiana, please see our Land Acknowledgment & Resource Guide. We have also listed some articles below:
For an extensive directory of indigenous museums and libraries, see the Association of Tribal Libraries, Archives, and Museums Directory.
For additional digital collections:
In this box you will find general NAIS collections followed by collections focused on geographic region/specific communities, governmental/legal documents, and Indigenous literature.
The following databases require an IU login to access.
Provides an interactive research environment that allows researchers to cross-search Gale digital archives.
Full text of thousands of primary source documents and informational texts.
Includes full-text content from 150 history journals, including American Historical Review, Archaeology, British Heritage, Canada’s History, Civil War Times, Military History, Teaching History, African Studies Quarterly, Ancient Egypt Magazine, Australian Historical Studies, Chinese Studies in History, Jewish History, Muslim World, Russian Studies in History and Women’s History Review.
Archival collections documenting topics in eighteenth- through twentieth-century American history. Provides access to digitized letters, papers, photographs, scrapbooks, financial records, diaries, and many more primary source materials taken from the University Publications of America (UPA) Collections.
Digitized primary source materials from the museums, libraries, and archives of the Smithsonian museum and research complex. Includes the following collections: World's Fairs And Expositions: Visions Of Tomorrow, Trade Literature & The Merchandising Industry, Air & Space, and the Smithsonian Magazines from 1970-present.
Index of journal articles in anthropology and related fields. The primary index for research in anthropology, it includes articles, reports, edited works, and obituaries in social, cultural, physical, biological, and linguistic anthropology, as well as in ethnology, archaeology, folklore, and material culture.
Comprehensive reference work cataloging all of the world's known living languages. Languages are listed alphabetically by primary name under the country of the main population. Information includes alternate names, dialects, number of speakers, multilingualism, and other demographic and sociolinguistic information, if known.
Primary source documents covering the lives of settlers and indigenous peoples in the European and colonial frontier regions of North America, Africa and Australasia.
The earliest documents in this collection are from the seventeenth century but the majority of the material originates from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The material covering North America covers the varied frontier regions from fur trappers in Canada to cowboys in Texas and government in Baja California. It is divided into the frontier regions of the American East, the American Midwest, the American Southwest, California & Mexico and Canada. It covers the exploration of these regions followed by trade with Native peoples, colonial rivalries, expansion of government and new nations and the final settlement and 'closing' of the frontier.
Africa is mainly represented by its frontiers of the south with the British colonial expansion into modern day South Africa. There is also material relating to the exploration of West Africa and the colonial administration of Lagos.
The beginnings of European Australia and New Zealand are covered by British government documents, starting with Arthur Phillip and the penal colony at Sydney. The frontiers of other parts of Australia are also covered by documents from the UK National Archives and some material from Australian archives.
Finally, there is some material relating to Central America, specifically British Honduras (Belize), in the form of the George Arthur Papers. George Arthur’s career here relates to the other regions featured here as he spent time on the Canadian and Australian frontiers.
Collection of primary sources such original manuscripts, maps, ephemeral material and rare printed sources, that cover social, political, and economic aspects of the American West.
From early topographical sketches and pioneers’ accounts, to photographs of Buffalo Bill and his ‘Wild West’ stars, explore the fact and the fiction of westward expansion in America from the early eighteenth to the mid-twentieth century. Within this resource you can use the chronology and data maps to discover facts and events in the history of the American West and view visual resources in bespoke, searchable galleries.
Primary source documents covering five centuries of exploration and colonization. Subjects include: journeys, scientific discoveries, the expansion of European colonialism, conflict over territories and trade routes, and decades-long search and rescue attempts.
Includes rare manuscript and early printed material, illustrated maps and documents, diaries and ships' logs. Covers the earliest voyages of Vasco da Gama, the opening of trade with the Spice Islands, the colonization of the Americas and Australasia, the search for the Northwest and Northeast Passages, and finally the race for the Poles.
Primary source documents related to Robert Winslow Gordon, the first archivist of the Archive of American Folk Song (now the Archive of Folk Culture) at the Library of Congress.
Gordon was a pioneer in using mechanical means to document folk musicians. His monthly column in Adventure Magazine, "Old Songs that Men Sing," attracted attention from readers across the United States, and he received thousands of letters containing songs and queries.
Provides access to primary source documents related to prejudice, segregation and racial tensions in America. Includes survey material, interviews and statistics, as well as educational pamphlets, administrative correspondence, and photographs and speeches from the Annual Race Relations Institutes.
Based at Fisk University from 1943-1970, the Race Relations Department and its annual Institute were set up by the American Missionary Association to investigate problem areas in race relations and develop methods for educating communities and preventing conflict. Documenting three pivotal decades in the fight for civil rights, this resource showcases the speeches, reports, surveys and analyses produced by the Department’s staff and Institute participants, including Charles S. Johnson, Dr Martin Luther King, Jr., and Thurgood Marshall.
Covering primarily the 1950s and 1960s, this resource provides access to primary source documents that focus on how ordinary citizens in the smaller communities viewed, participated in and lived through this historical era. When completed in 2025, the collection will include letters, general correspondence, logs, demonstration plan outlines, transportation logs and plans, meetings, worship services, photographs, newsletters, news reels, interviews and musical recordings from Black, Latine, Native American and Asian American Pacific Islander communities.
Contains primary source documents derived from the archives of the Central Intelligence Agency, covering foreign reactions to America’s racial struggles in the mid-20th century
Includes firsthand reporting on the rise of Indigenous rights in countries around the world; covers African American history, the Civil Rights movement, Hispanic American history, Asian American history, and the evolution of racial justice in America.
Covers American history from the colonial era through to the nation's rise as a global superpower. Includes primary and secondary sources, including government and court documents, photos, maps, audio and video recordings.
Also includes biographies of famous political and military figures, as well as 360 Course Essential Video modules recorded by master teachers and scholars.
Full text, searchable access to a digital collection of primary (and secondary) source documents about Latin America and the Caribbean.
World Scholar: Latin America and the Caribbean provides full text, searchable access to a digital collection of primary (and secondary) source documents about Latin America and the Caribbean. In scope it ranges from the colonial period to the present and includes monographs, manuscripts, pamphlets,letters, expedition records, journals, periodicals, reports, maps, diaries, descriptions of voyages, and newspaper accounts.
Among the historical collections are:Bauza Maps and Manuscripts Collection
Brazil's Popular Groups, 1966-1986
Coleccion De Documentos Ineditos Relativos Al Descubrimiento, Conquista Y Organizacion De Las Antiguas Posesiones Espanolas De America Y Oceania. -- Madrid : M.B. de Quyros, 1864-1884
Conquistadors: The Struggle for Colonial Power in Latin America, 1492-1825
Latin American History and Culture: An Archival Record, Series 1: The Yale University Collection of Latin American Manuscripts, Parts 1-7
Latin American and Iberian biographies
Mexican and Central American Political and Social Ephemera
Papers of Agustin de Iturbide, 1799-1880
Topic pages cover, among other things, countries in the region (e.g. Chile), people (e.g. Hugo Chavez, Simón Bolívar), commerce and industry (e.g. Petroleum Industry), history (e.g. Archaeology), politics (e.g. China-Latin American Relations).