History Research Guide

Available in print in the 2nd floor periodicals section.

Available in print in the 2nd floor periodicals section.

Historical newspaper articles from the Chicago Defender, Chicago Examiner, Chicago Sun-Times/Southern Star are available to the public at Chicago Public Library branches or remotely with a Chicago Public Library card.

Explore a select number of highly engaging collections of audio-visual sources, designed and curated for web viewers by the Chicago History Museum.

Collections of images related to Chicago history, including the construction of the sewers, the Chicago Renaissance, Harold Washington, Chicago Public Libraries, Millennium Park, and northside neighborhoods.

Explore Chicago Collections also provides access to digitized images from its member collections where possible. With over 100,000 digitized images available, you can explore fascinating imagery from Chicago-area archives covering the city's architecture, people, politics, history, culture and more.

A repository for the digital collection of the Illinois State Library and other libraries and cultural organizations in Illinois.

Chicago is home to a diverse range of organizations with extensive resources about the city's history and culture. Researchers often have to visit more than one archive to do in-depth research about Chicago. Most libraries and museums provide detailed guides to their archives that researchers can consult on the web prior to visiting in person. Until now, researchers had to know (or guess) in advance which libraries were likely to have relevant materials. Explore Chicago Collections brings those guides together into a single gateway to Chicago resources. By searching Explore Chicago Collections, you can easily tell which archives you'll need to consult to research your subject, and you may even discover resources in unexpected places.

Use this portal to search the Chicago Public Library's archival collections (which cannot be discovered via Explore Chicago Collections and must be searched independently).

This website represents the culmination of two years of archival surveying of African American primary-source research materials in locations throughout the Chicago region, including the Bronzeville Historical Society, Chicago Defender, Chicago History Museum, DePaul, the Newberry, Northwestern, and University of Chicago.

The Illinois Regional Archives Depository (IRAD)-- Chicago Branch houses collections of historically valuable primary source documents from Chicago and Cook County local governments. The Chicago City Council Proceedings Files, 1833-1944, constitute, by far, the largest group of loose records on Chicago proper, including committee reports, orders, assessment rolls, appointments, official oaths and bonds, ordinances and resolutions, poll books and tally sheets, licenses, petitions, and remonstrances. A subject index exists on microfiche. In addition, IRAD houses select minutes and records of the Chicago Civil Service Commission; select annual registered voter indexes of the Chicago Board of Elections; the Chicago Police Department Film Review Board Files, 1912-1983; as well as select liquor licenses, Sanborn atlases, Department of Public Works atlases, and election ward precinct maps.

University of Chicago's Mapping the Stacks project aims to identify and organize uncatalogued archival collections that chronicle Black Chicago between the 1930s and 1970s, in order to increase their use by researchers and the general public. The project works with varied kinds of artifacts: literary manuscripts and visual illustrations; rare books and home movies; correspondence and photographs; ephemera and tape-recorded sound.

The National Archives at Chicago has more than 140,000 cubic feet of historical records dating from 1800 to the 1990's, including textual records and non-textual records such as maps and photographs from Federal courts and some 85 Federal agencies in Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio, and Wisconsin. Historical themes documented range from the early nineteenth century opening of Midwestern public lands to the Civil Rights Movement to the development of space exploration technology.

F548.18 P33 1986

Search thousands of historical resources, including articles, photos, maps, broadsides and newspapers, related to Chicago's history. From the Chicago Historical Society.

A collection of over 200 non-scholarly ebooks related to the history of various Illinois locations, populations, and traditions.