A collection of local restaurant menus donated by Larry Carius, author of the popular Bloomington-Normal Restaurant Scene page on Facebook.
Detailed inventories of archival collections housed in our onsite archives.
The Funk family arrived in McLean County from Ohio in 1824. Over the years Isaac Funk acquired 22,000 acres of farmland and upon his...
For more than 90 years, the McLean County Poor Farm, located south of Bloomington, housed some of the area’s poorest and most...
Charles U. Williams came to Bloomington in the late nineteenth century. He was an itinerant photographer who decided to relocate to...
Thousands of images of the built environment, from the earliest cabins to construction of homes in the 21st century.
Thousands of images showing hundreds of occupations that helped build McLean County, and the people who labored within them.
Images in this collection include clubs, schools, parades, sports, service organizations, government, and medicine in McLean County.
Links to dozens of publications about McLean County history, digitized by the Museum and other institutions
City directories are an invaluable historical resource. Thanks to a partnership with Bloomington Public Library and intern Noah Tang, local directories from 1855-1920 have been digitized, and are available on the Internet Archive.
Home Town in the Corn Belt, which debuted in late December 1950, contains 171 articles, including 39 biographical sketches and 52 poems relating to local history by 132 authors (mostly regular local folk).
Good Old Times in McLean County, The Biographical Record of McLean County, Illustrated History of McLean County, and much more.
The Bloomington-Normal Black History Project (BNBHP) was founded in 1982 and its collections span the 19th and 20th centuries. The collection contains photographs, portraits, booklets, articles, and photocopies related to club organizations and churches of the local Black community. In 1989, the Black History Project was affiliated with the McLean County Historical Society, which now serves as a repository for the project's collections.
The McLean County Latino History Project is a cooperative endeavor between the McLean County Museum of History and the Illinois State University Latin American and Latino Studies Program. The project's purpose is to research and record the culture and experience of Latinos who have settled in McLean County and to identify and collect artifacts associated with their culture and lives.
City directories are an invaluable historical resource. Thanks to a partnership with Bloomington Public Library and intern Noah Tang, local directories from 1855-1920 have been digitized, and are available on the Internet Archive.
The Stevenson-Ives Library contains more than 15,000 books and periodicals with a focus on McLean County and Central Illinois history and genealogy.
The Museum's Archive features a wide-range of primary and secondary source material relating to the history of McLean County, from the 1820s to the present.
The nearly 20,000 objects preserved at the Museum document the growth and development of McLean County from the prehistoric period through the present.
Links to even more McLean County history online!
Adlai Today examines the references made to Adlai Stevenson II in current issues in news stories. Explore this website to find out more about this inspirational political figure who called Bloomington home.
See high resolution digital photographs of the paintings from our collection at the Google Cultural Institute
Held by the MCMH and digitized by Eastern Illinois University. The Post Amerikan began publication in 1972 in Bloomington-Normal, Illinois. An underground, alternative newspaper, it was run collectively by volunteers. It was the longest continuous publication run for any underground newspaper in America.
Addresses use of digital cameras and personal scanners in Library/Archives.
Fees for Personal Scans of Archival Images
If you want our staff to scan an image from our Archives for personal use, see this document.
Fees for Scans of Archival Images for Commercial Use
If you want our staff to scan an image from our Archives for commercial use, see this document.
