Library of the Peoria Historical Society

On deposit at the University since 1980, this collection contains more than ten thousand items pertaining to the history of Peoria and central Illinois. Among the holdings are: a nearly complete run of city directories beginning with 1844, most cross indexed by occupation, business, and street address; biographical dictionaries covering residents from 1880-1912; an index with abstracts for fifteen area newspapers published between 1834 and 1864; city and county maps including Sanborn Fire Insurance Atlases; and almost 100 linear feet of vertical files containing ephemera indexed by broad subjects such as family and street names and business and organization types. Holdings also include a library of publications by area authors, a reference collection of books on central Illinois history, and thousands of photographic images of early Peoria, many on glass plate negatives.