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Natural and Applied Sciences Archives: Digital Records

These topic guides provide a starting point for finding source materials related to the history of science and technology at the University of Illinois. Please note that these guides are not definitive or comprehensive and are periodically updated.

About Digital Records

For convenience, we have compiled here the previously noted Digital Records related to the Natural and Applied Sciences. We have elected to include on this page main highlights and frequently used records. The topic headings are live links that will redirect you to that subject's specific page on this guide and its section on Digital Records, so that you may view a more comprehensive list alongside the physical and related materials too.

Digital Records can be found in several locations, such as: 

  • Directly through a search on our Holdings Database. See the Digital Materials: A-Z tab 
    • This database contains descriptions of all materials held by the University of Illinois Archives, including non-current University records, faculty and alumni papers, and materials from the Sousa Archives and Center for American Music, the Advertising Council Archives, the American Society of Quality, and others institutions whose archives we hold on contract for their research value. The American Library Association Archives are described in a separate database.
  • The Digital Library
  • Electronic Records Browser
    • Materials found here include textual documents and other files drawn from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Archives, the American Library Association Archives, the Association of American Law Schools Archives, and the American Association of Law Libraries Archives. These are Born-Digital materials and are also described and linked in our collections database.
    • See also:
  • IDEALS
    • "The Illinois Digital Environment for Access to Learning and Scholarship, collects, disseminates, and provides persistent and reliable access to the research and scholarship of faculty, staff, and students at the .

      Faculty, staff, and graduate students can deposit their research and scholarship—unpublished and, in many cases, published—directly into IDEALS. Departments can use IDEALS to distribute their working papers, technical reports, or other research material.

    • IDEALS also includes all electronic theses and dissertations deposited from Fall 2010 onward."

    • Note: Searches through the Digital Library will also include records in IDEALS.

  • and the UIHistories Project

    • A digitized holding from archives and other campus units, this includes born digital images from campus and was developed by Kalev Leetaru as student project. It was transferred to Archives custody in January 2013.

Digital Holdings - General Resources

Digital Holdings

ACES

Morrow Plots

College and Departmental Records

Publications and Reference Files

Computer Science and Computing

Engineering

College and Departmental Archives

  • College of Engineering Annual Reports: Digital surrogates for 1906-1959, 1970-1971, and 1987-1988.
  • College of Engineering Historical File, 1908-1996: Includes select correspondence, reports, programs, brochures, and newsletters concerning the Engineering Open House, the renaming of the Engineering Research Laboratory as the Mechanical Engineering Laboratory (1966), the renaming of the Department of Aeronautical Engineering as the Department of Aeronautical and Astronautical Engineering (1961), the dedication of the William L. Everitt Laboratory (1987-1988), and speeches of Dean Daniel C. Drucker. Additional digitized materials are available upon request.

Civil and Environmental Engineering

Electrical and Computer Engineering

Disability and Rehabilitation

  • DRES Subject File (Digital Surrogates): Includes select digitized materials concerning facility and equipment requirements, accessibility modifications to campus buildings, the physical rehabilitation program, special services' evolution from war veteran exclusive to non-veteran students with disabilities, program replication in other domestic and foreign universities, and the bus adaptation program. Physical records are located in Record Series 16/6/1.
  • National Wheelchair Basketball Association (NWBA) Newsletters (Digital Surrogates): Digitized copies of NWBA's periodic newsletter concerning sporting events, tournament results, staff designation, bylaws, and fundraising activities. Physical records are located in Record Series 16/6/3.
  • Gizz Kids/Ms Kids Wheelchair Basketball Teams File: Digitized correspondence, newspaper clippings, programs, press releases, programs, and rosters concerning team history, activities, and achievements; wheelchair sports rules; and accessibility issues at UIUC and other sporting event host venues. Physical records are located in Record Series 16/6/5.
  • Accessibility Standards Subject File (Digital Surrogates): Digitized records of the National Program to Eliminate and Prevent Architectural Barriers to the Handicapped and the American Standards Association Steering and Sectional Committees concerning trends and development in equipment and devices for people with disabilities and American Standards Association history. Physical records are located in Record Series 16/6/17.
  • "Expanding Horizons," the History of DRES (Digital Surrogate): Digitized copy of the commemorative publication Expanding Horizons: A History of the First 50 Years of the Division of Rehabilitation-Education Services at the University of Illinois. The physical record is located in Record Series 16/6/803.

Health Services

Public Health

American Library Association Archives Digital Collections

Cybernetics Thought Collective (Digital Surrogates)

Digital Rare Book Collection

French World War I Posters

Illinois History and Lincoln Collections

Mapping History at the University of Illinois Collection

Sjoerd Koopman Library Postcard Collection

Teaching with Digital Content (Cultural Heritage Community)

College and Departmental Archives

Agriculture, Consumer, and Environmental Sciences Photograph File (Born Digital Records)

College of Fine and Applied Arts: Teaching Collection

News Media Records

WILL Sound Recordings (Digital Surrogates)

Beckman Institute for Science and Technology

  • Theodore L. Brown Papers (Born Digital Records and Digital Surrogates): Includes presentation slides and a draft text, concerning Brown's publication "Bridging Divides: The Origins of the Beckman Institute at Illinois". This series also include a digitized audio recording of the Beckman Institute Dedication on April 6th, 1989. The presentations slides are available online. The digitized audio-recording is also available. The draft of the publication is available upon request. Physical records can be found in Record Series:15/5/44 Theodore L. Brown Papers, 1951-1996.

  • William T. Greenough Papers (Born Digital Records): Contains drafts of manuscripts, correspondence, research and teaching material, grant proposals, and biographical sketches concerning William T. Greenough's career as a professor of Molecular and Integrative Physiology, Psychology, and Psychiatry, and as director for the Center for Advanced Study and his work at the Beckman Institute. Files are from Professor Greenough's laptop. Additional digital materials are available upon request. Includes complementary information about Greenough's career as director for the Center for Advanced Study and his work at the Beckman Institute as the Co-Director of the Main Research Theme Group on Biological Intelligence. Materials document research collaborations with colleagues, such as on the neurobiology of the fragile X syndrome, cellular mechanisms of memory storage, and aging, as well as his work as editor for the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Physical records can be found in Record Series: 15/19/30 William T. Greenough Papers, 1968-2010.

  • Digital Image results for Beckman Institute

Biological Computer Laboratory 

  • The Cybernetics Thought Collective Project (Record Series 35/3/99): A collaboration between the University of Illinois, the British Library, the American Philosophical Society, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to develop a web portal and analysis engine to provide access to archival records related to the development of the field of cybernetics. Digitized materials include records related to the pioneering work of U of I Electrical Engineering Professor Heinz von Foerster and his fellow cyberneticians W. Ross Asbhy, Warren S. McCulloch, and Norbert Wiener. 
  • Murray Babcock Papers (Digital Surrogates) (Record Series 11/6/35): Contains digitized audio recordings of speech and sound data from Babcock's work on the Dynamic Signal Analyzer.
  • Biological Computer Laboratory Publications, 1957-1976: Digital surrogates include grant proposals, technical reports, publications, general reports, and yearly summaries concerning cybernetics, biological computing, sound processing, self-organizing systems, visual processing, language processing, computational semantics, complex computer systems, computers and cognitive functions, computational linguistics, and information processing. The physical record series is also available.

Archaeology

Morgantina Archaelogical Excavations

Entomology

Microbiology

Zoology

Chemical Sciences

Physics

Women in the Sciences