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About the Libraries

Library Collections

The Library has developed a number of in-house collections on specialized topics of particular interest to researchers. Many of these materials have been made possible due to funds from grants and from private endowments.

These resources are in a variety of formats: books, periodicals, personal papers, microfilm, CDs, DVDs and sound recordings. They are housed in the main Malpass Library or in the branch libraries.

Archives and Special Collections

Among the many resources of this unit are:

Center for Hancock County History
This collection contains materials relating to one of Illinois' most historically significant counties. Primary focus is on the Mormon period in Nauvoo (1839-1846), but other periods are also collected.
Baxter-Snyder Center for Icarian Studies
WIU Libraries is home to the world's largest collection of materials relating to the Icarians, a French utopianist community who lived in Nauvoo in the 1850s, and later in other locations in the United States.
Civil War Collection
The Civil War Collection contains letters, diaries, and other materials documenting the western Illinois experience in the war.
Decker Press Collection
WIU Libraries is home to the single largest collection of books and other manuscripts relating to the Decker Press, a vanity poetry press located in Prairie City, Illinois from 1937-1950.
Digital Image Collection
One of the largest such collections in Illinois, the WIU Digital Image Collection contains over 4000 fully catalogued and searchable images relating to the history of WIU and west central Illinois.

Film Collections (Lists Coming Soon)

These DVDs and CDs circulate from the main stacks of the Malpass Library. They are available as the result of grant funds from CARLI (Consortium of Academic Research Libraries in Illinois). An enhanced, searchable database of these films is currently being developed.

Index to Plays In Collections

This search tool identifies plays in the Library's holdings. It is used as a supplement to title and author searches performed in WestCat as records in that database may not fully reflect the contents of an item.

Leibovitz Holocaust Collection (List Coming Soon)

This memorial collection is a variety of materials related to the Holocaust which are especially suitable for middle and high school teachers and students. It is located at the WIU-Quad Cities Library.

Map Collection

The Map Collection is located at the southwest corner of the fourth floor of Malpass Library. It is part of the Government & Legal Information Unit and contains many U.S. government maps including the popular USGS topographic maps. A wide range of atlases, Illinois county plat books and GIS books are also important elements of the collection.

Periodical Reprint Series

Experience the political uprisings of the America in the first half of the 1900s, Great Britain in the first half of the 1800s, and the feminist and anti-war debates of the turbulent 1960s in these primary source materials. Many of these items are located in the Microfilm section on the third floor of Malpass Library, but others are in other areas of the library.

Petersen Ornithological Collection

The Petersen Collection is comprised of approximately 1,000 unique titles of rare and high quality ornithological books, periodicals, banding cards and records dating back to 1886. Although the major focus of the collection is birds, other animal classifications are broadly represented.

View Petersen Collection

Swofford Popular Reading Collection (List Coming Soon)

The paperback fiction and non-fiction general reading collection on the main level of the Malpass Library is supported by this memorial endowment.