Examples of objects in the Museum archives

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.

Materials include—but are not limited to—correspondence, day books, diaries, ledgers, photographs, postcards, maps, microform, newsletters, newspapers, oral histories, scrapbooks and unpublished manuscripts.

The Archive includes collections relating to local businesses, agriculture, churches, families, military units, organizations, schools and general subjects. Finding aids for over 500 collections are available online, The remaining Archive holdings are accessed in the Library/Archives Reading Room, which includes an index to holdings searchable by title, keyword, or author.

The McLean County Museum of History is a not-for-profit institution, and as such has no direct institutional relationship with either the County of McLean or the City of Bloomington. Thus, we are not a repository for county or municipal records. Instead, our collections are almost wholly dependent on donations by local residents and others interested in preserving McLean County history.

If you are interested in donating material, please contact the Librarian.


If you are interested in obtaining copies of archival images, please refer to these documents: