Over 200 Illinois Newspapers Digitized

Now available: over two hundred digitized Illinois newspapers: https://go.library.illinois.edu/npcom. Access currently restricted to computers with a campus IP address, but will soon be freely available through the Illinois Digital Newspaper Collections (IDNC) to researchers everywhere. Continue reading “Over 200 Illinois Newspapers Digitized”

Call for Applications: 2022-2023 Research Travel Grant

Update: It’s not too late to apply for a Research Travel Grant to visit our Library in Spring 2023! Applications received by December 5, 2022, will be considered for spring funding.

Call for applications: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Library 2022-2023 Research Travel Grant

The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Library and the Department of History are pleased to announce a Research Travel Grant to support scholars conducting research in any of the Library’s collections. Continue reading “Call for Applications: 2022-2023 Research Travel Grant”

Colonial Caribbean New Module: Colonial Government and Abolition, 1833-1849

Now available: the second module of the digital collection Colonial Caribbean. Like the first module, Module 2 covers British colonialism in the Caribbean, and comprises documents from the British National Archives, digitized in full color. Continue reading “Colonial Caribbean New Module: Colonial Government and Abolition, 1833-1849”

Zion, IL: Utopia on the Prairie

In researching context for newspapers in the Illinois Digital Newspaper Collection I came across the fascinating history of Zion, IL, formerly Zion City, which was created as a utopian community in 1901 by an evangelical and early Pentecostal faith healer named John Alexander Dowie. In its early years the city did not allow drinking, dancing, smoking, card playing, theater, or even driving more than 10 miles an hour. Zion is a small town south of Kenosha and north of Waukegan in Lake County, Illinois. It is currently home to a nuclear power plant but boasts a rich history in American religious movements and utopian city planning.  Continue reading “Zion, IL: Utopia on the Prairie”

What’s Missing from this Digital Collection?

Many of our digital collections were created from microfilm surrogates, which is to say that the original print collection was at some point microfilmed (mostly in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s) for sale to libraries. Our own library bought many of these microfilm collections. Because it’s so much less expensive to digitize from microfilm (than from print originals), and because digitizing from microfilm spares those print originals from unnecessary wear and tear, many of our digital collections were created from these microfilm surrogates. You might be wondering how to determine whether a collection was digitized from microfilm. One good sign is if the documents in the collection are displayed in black-and-white (especially low bit-depth black-and-white) rather than color. Collections digitized directly from original print documents will usually display those documents in color. For example, the following: Continue reading “What’s Missing from this Digital Collection?”