Indiana University Finding Aids

Center for the Study of History and Memory, IU Bloomington

Center for the Study of History and Memory, IU Bloomington [close]

Our archive contains the oral history projects of the Center since its founding in 1968. Most of the interviews in our collection have both the audio recording and a hard copy transcript. The collection continues to grow through new Center projects as well as donated oral history collections from scholars. For more information, visit the Center for the Study of History and Memory.

Folklore Collection, IU Bloomington

Folklore Collection, IU Bloomington [close]

The IU Libraries' Folklore Collection is the largest single library collection of its type in North America. The collection supports upper division undergraduate and graduate teaching, as well as PhD and faculty-level research in the Department of Folklore and Ethnomusicology. We collect works on every topic of interest to folklorists and ethnomusicologists all shelved in a single convenient location. For more information, visit the Folklore Collection Home Page.

Liberian Collections, IU Bloomington

Liberian Collections, IU Bloomington [close]

The Liberian Collections is the largest non-governmental collection of Liberian materials in the world. Materials include personal papers, historical and ethnographic documents, government publications, newspapers, books, journals, dissertations, genealogical records, maps, artifacts, memorabilia and a variety of photographic, video and audio formats. For more information, visit the Liberian Collections Project.

Lilly Library, IU Bloomington

Lilly Library, IU Bloomington [close]

The rare books, manuscripts, and special collections library of the Indiana University Libraries, Bloomington. For more information, visit the Lilly Library.

Political Papers, IU Bloomington

Political Papers, IU Bloomington [close]

The Indiana University Modern Political Papers Collection consists of the congressional papers of senators and members of the House of Representatives from Indiana serving from post-World War II to the present. Its primary focus is on senatorial collections and the papers of representatives from south central Indiana. For more information, visit the Modern Political Papers.

University Archives, IU Bloomington

University Archives, IU Bloomington [close]

The Indiana University Archives is the largest and most comprehensive source of information on the history and culture of IU. For more information, visit the Archives Home Page.

Working Men's Institute

Working Men's Institute [close]

The Working Men's Institute Archives hosts the Branigin Archive, which houses the manuscripts collected from the Harmonist and Owen communal societies established at New Harmony, 1814-1827. It also contains items from the close of the Owen community in 1827 up to the present day including materials from the after-glow period when New Harmony was known as the "Athens on the Wabash" (1827-1900). Besides manuscripts, the Branigin Archive houses books on New Harmony and related subjects. For more information, visit the Working Men's Institute.

What are Finding Aids?

Finding aids are guides to collections held in archives and libraries at Indiana University. Generally, descriptions of items in manuscript collections, such as letters, diaries, and photographs, do not appear in IUCAT (IU's online catalog). Finding aids provide detailed descriptions of manuscript collections, their intellectual organization and, at varying levels of analysis, individual items in the collections.

Access to the finding aid is essential for understanding the true content of a manuscript collection. This website allows you to search and view finding aids.

Finding aids in this system are encoded according to the Encoded Archival Description (EAD) format. For more information on this format, see the EAD home page at the Library of Congress.

For more information about EAD activities at Indiana University's Digital Library Program (DLP) and documentation about the process used to encode finding aids at IU, visit the EAD page of the DLP website.

Online finding aids are also available from The IUPUI University Library's Ruth Lilly Special Collections & Archives