LibGuides: Illinois Waters Bibliography: Home

About the Illinois Waters Bibliography

The Illinois Waters Bibliography is a finding aid for information on the watersheds, rivers, lakes, and other water resources of Illinois. Much of this historic and recent information is freely available online, but can be a challenge to find because it is scattered across various digital platforms. While not comprehensive, this bibliography aims to represent the important contributions to the knowledge of Illinois' water resources, with particular emphasis on the work of Illinois' State Scientific Surveys (which currently belong to the Prairie Research Institute). The bibliography consists of two types of pages:

Survey and assessments of Illinois waters are pages describing programs or projects covering multiple water bodies with links to the resulting reports or other outputs. Programs/projects are listed chronologically by their starting dates on the index page.
Bibliographies on specific Illinois waters highlight resources on a particular body of water. These include links to reports, data resources, and other materials of interest. Water bodies are listed alphabetically on the index page.

We are actively adding new resources and pages to the Illinois Waters Bibliography.

Digital Libraries you can use to find information on Illinois waters

Internet Archive
Use the advanced search to search for words in the title or other specific fields. Or type your terms into the box at the top right of the page to search everything, including the full text. The Internet Archive holds many documents containing information on the waters of Illinois. Search results can be viewed online, or downloaded in a variety of formats. You can also search within specific documents to find mentions of your topic.
HathiTrust
Founded in 2008, HathiTrust is a not-for-profit collaborative of academic and research libraries preserving 17+ million digitized items. Contains many government documents and is a great source for finding information on the waters of Illinois. Items not restricted by copyright are available full text, and it is possible to search within documents to find mentions of a topic, even if the item is not available as full text. Simple and advanced searching is available for catalog records or full text. You can also search within a specific document for mentions of a topic. Item and page level permalinks are offered.
National Service Center for Environmental Publications
Search the U.S. Environmental Protection Agencies document database. Many full text documents are available. This is a good source for federal environmental studies and assessments of Illinois waters.
USGS ScienceBase Catalog
A U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) Trusted Digital Repository providing access to scientific data products and resources. Access documents, maps, and data, including many items produced by the Illinois State Geological Survey.
IDEALS
Find reports, dissertations and theses, and more from University of Illinois research in our institutional repository. IDEALS contains a wealth of information on Illinois topics, including Illinois waters.

Relevant Digital Collections

Illinois State Water Survey Publications
Find and download ISWS publications, search or browse whole collection or by series.
Illinois State Water Survey Maps
Online access to the ISWS map series. Physical copies of some maps are available upon request.
Illinois Water Resources Center Publications
Full text of the IWRC publications in IDEALS, organized by topic.
River Maps
A collection of digitized maps featuring rivers of Illinois, provided by the University of Illinois Map Library.

The Illinois Waters Bibliography was inspired by the Boneyard Creek bibliography created by Pat Gobert at the Illinois State Water Survey. For more information about the Boneyard Creek Bibliography, see the Boneyard Creek page.