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Virginius H. Chase Special Collections Center

The Virginius H. Chase Special Collections Center and Bradley University Archives holds both material owned by the university and items placed on deposit by area organizations. These materials must be used in a controlled environment.

Major Collections

The Association of Public Safety Communications Officers (APCO) is the world’s oldest and largest public safety radio user group. The Illinois Chapter is one of the most significant in the history of the organization and contributed a number of the early national officers. Their files and records are in the collection, along with Proceedings of the Annual Conferences from 1939 to 1955 and a complete run of the APCO Bulletin monthly magazine beginning with the inaugural issue in February, 1935, to the present. APCO members are drawn from law enforcement agencies, emergency medical services, fire departments, forestry services, transportation agencies, military units, and manufacturers. Decades of material from this collection has already been digitized and is searchable by author, title, keywords, and date on the web at apcohistory.org

Contains archival and artifactual material pertaining to the history of the University and, by extension, to people, events, and activities of central Illinois for the past century. The collection includes a virtually complete runs of student newspapers, yearbooks, and catalogs as well as scrapbooks of contemporary materials from 1894-1916 along with a limited number of sound recordings, videos, and motion picture film of University events. While virtually all publications contain photographs, there are a number of original images in the collection dating primarily from the middle years of the twentieth century. Several published histories of the institution and specific departments are available as well as a biography of Lydia Moss Bradley.

Full Texts of Significant Work Online:

Bradley Polytechnic Institute. The first decade, 1897-1907. Peoria, Ill. 1918.

Materials pertaining to Philander Chase (1775-1852), first Episcopal bishop of Illinois and founder of both Kenyon and Jubilee colleges. The heart of the collection is a group of 2,600 manuscript letters from and to the Bishop and his family. Also included are several hundred books, pamphlets, and images. Among these secondary materials are a first edition of Chase’s Reminiscences first published serially in Peoria in 1841; the 1835 Journal of the Primary Convention of the Diocese of Illinois, the earliest recorded Peoria imprint; the first (1839) published map of Peoria County; copies of the Motto, a magazine printed at Jubilee; and a series of pamphlets occasioned by the ecclesiastical trial, presided over by Chase, of the Bishop of New York.

The collection also documents the formation of the Citizens Committee, organized in 1971 to raise funds and lobby the state to restore the building. These efforts were ultimately successful and Jubilee College was opened in 1986 as a state historic site.

Full Texts of Significant Work Online:

Approximately 2,500 items relating to the 16th president of the United States and the Civil War including several original letters written in Lincoln’s hand and a notebook he kept while a candidate for the U. S. Senate in 1855. In addition, the collection holds a set of the War of the Rebellion Records along with atlases and several contemporary accounts of the war among which are a manuscript diary kept by an area resident who saw action on the Mississippi and a body of correspondence between another central Illinoisan and his fiancée while the young man fought in the western theater. The largest group of material is contained in the Martin L. Houser Collection which consists of approximately 1,000 books and 300 pamphlets. Houser was widely acknowledged as a leading authority on the books read by the self-educated Lincoln from his earliest childhood. Houser collected duplicates of every book Lincoln was known to have read, always in the same edition.

Full Texts of Significant Work Online:

  • Nicolay, John G. and Hay, John. Complete Works of Abraham Lincoln. 11 vols. New York: Various publishers, 1894-1905.

One of Bradley’s original faculty and a pioneer in the Industrial Arts Education Movement, Charles Alpheus Bennett also founded the Manual Arts Press, now part of Glencoe-McGraw Hill. In the late 1930s, Bennett donated his personal library of some 1,000 books and 6,000 pamphlets. These items are grouped in four categories:

  1. materials acquired for research on Bennett’s two books (History of Manual and IndustrialEducation Up To 1870 and History of Manual and Industrial Education: 1870-1917 );
  2. ephemera gathered during forty years as editor of Industrial Education magazine;
  3. technical books and course outlines published during the early years of the Manual Training Movement in Sweden, England, France, Germany, and the United States; and
  4. books on art instruction published in the first half of the nineteenth century. Within these categories, the collection also provides a good deal of information about Bennett and his activities in the Peoria area.

Full Texts of Significant Work Online

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 275 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, a number of which can be viewed online at CARLI Digital Collections.

To search the holdings of the Peoria Historical Society, visit https://www.peoriahistoricalsociety.org/search.

Full Texts of Significant Work Online

Jack Bradley developed his talent as a combat photographer during the Korean War where he earned a Bronze Star, three battle stars, and a Presidential Citation. After discharge he worked for a Peoria television station as their first newsreel photographer before joining the Journal Star newspaper in 1955. Over the next twenty five years, he attained a regional prominence few have ever equaled.

The collection contains over 2,200 images shot by Bradley from 1955 to 1977. Most are black and white, residing on prints and 35mm slides as well as on negatives in several formats up to 4×5. The majority of images were shot for Sunday feature pages and focus on human interest with subjects such as: small town life, architecture, sports and recreation, religion, cemeteries, politics, the homeless, the Illinois River, and country life.

The collection is being digitized and indexed; over 2,200 images are currently available online at http://collections.carli.illinois.edu/cdm4/index_bra_jack.php?CISOROOT=/bra_jack

Featured Collections

Henry Miller, Alfred Perlés, and Irma Stein Collection

Additional Resources

Items in Special Collections exist in a wide range of formats and media including: books, pamphlets, postcards, stereopticon views, letters, diaries, maps, atlases, magazines, newsletters, scrapbooks, photographic prints, glass plate negatives, nitrate base negatives, motion picture film, slides, and magnetic recordings. The nature of the materials and the diversity of formats and media have several important implications for the researcher.

Perhaps the most important of these is that logistical considerations as well as conservation concerns may prevent all items relevant to a particular topic from being grouped together. Anyone using the collection should, therefore, be prepared to repeat his/her investigations in different groupings of material and to recognize certain items may be more difficult to access or copy. Nitrate base negatives, for example, are refrigerated and require time to brought up to room temperature before they can be viewed; producing prints from these negatives is difficult and entails higher cost and longer lead time than printing from conventional negatives.

Another factor which may make resources in Special Collections seem less user-friendly than those in the rest of the Library is that much of the material is primary rather than secondary. Someone doing research on an area business, for example, might be presented with multiple boxes of original correspondence and records instead of a book or article on the history of the firm. In such a case, considerable effort will be required on the part of the visitor to interpret the material and to decide which, if any, items should be copied.

Similarly, even the basic question of whether a given topic is covered in a particular resource (and to what degree) may not be answerable without extensive investigation. A inquiry about nineteenth century brass foundries may first require reading decades of city directories to determine business names and locations, then review of vertical files and inventories of image collections by street addresses, and finally examination of prints and negatives to determine whether any of the structures depicted could be foundries. Images present a particular challenge in that each may contain an almost infinite number of subjects depending upon what the researcher is looking for. While no inventories may specifically list horse drawn vehicles, for example, an extensive review of negatives and prints listed by street or business may reveal a significant number of such vehicles even if they are not the central focus of the image.

Although the staff will provide assistance whenever possible, the diversity of the collections will cause the success of any given inquiry to depend largely on the time and energy the individual researcher is able to commit.

Hours for Special Collections

Monday – Friday:9:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m.
Saturday – Sunday:CLOSED

Appointments encouraged:

Call (309) 677-2822 or email specialcollections@bradley.edu to make an appointment.

For information regarding Peoria Historical Society Collections, please contact PHS directly at curator@peoriahistoricalsociety.org or (309) 674-1921.

Additional Centers

Simpson Curriculum Materials Center

The Simpson Curriculum Materials Center (CMC) provides examples of textbooks, reference books, children’s literature and teaching materials used in elementary and secondary schools to Bradley’s education students and other interested individuals.

Dedicated in 1990 through the generous support of Howard M. and Kathryn Jacquin Simpson, the CMC includes a wide array of materials and services to enhance curriculum development and design. Our collection holds over 8,900 materials, including textbooks on health, language arts, mathematics, music, phonics, reading, science, social studies, and family and consumer sciences. We also have a variety of children’s literature, games, software, kits, manipulatives and an Ellison lettering machine.

  • The Curriculum Materials Center is available for general browsing even when closed. If you require assistance while the desk is unattended, ask the first floor Check Out Desk for assistance
  • Testing materials are shelved in secure cabinets alphabetically by title. You must receive special permission from an education faculty member to borrow these items. Contact the CMC coordinator Holly Johnson at hjohnson2@bradley.edu after you’ve gotten authorization.
  • You must check out other secured materials like the games and manipulatives from a staff member at the CMC desk. If CMC desk is unattended, ask the first floor Check Out Desk for assistance.
  • The study area next to the CMC is available for group or class reservations; contact the CMC coordinator Holly Johnson at hjohnson2@bradley.edu.

Hours of Operation

Monday – Thursday10:00 a.m. – 6:00 p.m.
Friday10:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m.
Saturday & SundayCLOSED

Summer, Interims and Breaks: CLOSED

Sports Communication Resource Center

The Sports Communication Resource Center focuses on the history of sports communication in America — featuring papers, recordings, media guides, and books about Bradley, Peoria, Central Illinois, and selected regional and national interests. It encompasses the Bradley University Athletics deposit as well as the Robert Pille and Jim Obert collections.

Jim Obert Sportswriting Collection

Jim Obert worked as a sportswriter for the Peoria Journal Star, covering golf and bowling in the area. The collection includes newspaper clippings, photographs, magazine articles and reports from 1938 through 1994.
Bradley University Athletics Deposit

The Bradley University Athletics Deposit includes sports programs, photographs, correspondence, scorecards and other memorabilia from various Bradley men’s and women’s teams.
Robert Pille Collection

Bradley graduate Robert Pille ’50 began his career as a reporter for the Peoria Journal Star in 1943. He spent the last 22 years of his career covering Big Ten sports for the Chicago Sun-Times, retiring in 1988. The collection consists of his articles and a variety of sports programs, books and audio recordings.

Hours of Operation

Summer HoursBy Appointment Only

Call (309) 677-2822 or email specialcollections@bradley.edu to make an appointment.

Music Resource Center

Students and faculty members may request music resource items like scores, sheet music and BU recordings. Faculty may also browse the music collection.

Retrieval of Music Resource Items — Scores, Sheet Music and Bradley Recordings

  • Students or faculty members who want a score, sheet music or recording must request the item at the circulation desk. 
  • An access services person will retrieve the item from the Music Resource area.
  • The requestor is not allowed to accompany this person. 
  • Another staff member or student must cover the circulation desk during the retrieval period. 
  • The requester must check out the desired items on their ID card. If a faculty member does not have their ID, the items can be labeled with the person’s name and set aside for next-day delivery. 
  • Scores and sheet music can be checked out like any other item. Bradley recordings can only be used in the building for four (4) hours at a time. 

Browsing the Music Collection

  • Per the library director, ONLY faculty are allowed to browse the music collection. NO exceptions. Complaints will be routed to the director. 
  • To browse the music collection, faculty must check out the Music Resource key at the circulation desk. You may have the key for two hours, and you must return it to the desk.

Hours for Music Retrieval

Monday – Friday:9:00 a.m. – 4:00 p.m.
Saturday – Sunday:closed

Government Documents

The Cullom-Davis Library is a digital-only depository library for U.S. government documents, which you can search online.

Bradley Federal Depository Profile

  • Depository Library Number: 0159A
  • Federal Depository Type: Selective depository library
  • Type of Designation: Representative
  • Congressional District: Illinois 17th

Bradley’s Cullom-Davis Library joined the Federal Depository Library Program (FDLP) in Feb 1963. In 2016, the library became a FDLP’s digital-only depository library. Please use USA.gov or govinfo.gov or your favorite search tool to find federal government publications online.

The library is also one of the Illinois Depository Libraries.

Locating Government Publications On the Web

Many government publications/documents are available online. Use your favorite search engine, USA.gov, govinfo.gov or HathiTrust Digital Library.

Traditional search tools

The following may also help you find government publications:

  • Catalog of U.S. Government Publications, 1976 to present. Formerly known as “The Monthly Catalog.” For the years before 1976, please see “The Cumulative Title Index to United States Public Documents, 1789-1976,”
  • “The Cumulative Title Index to United States Public Documents, 1789-1976”(Ref. Z 1223 .Z7 L47, v.1-16) is an alphabetical listing, by title, of publications in the Public Documents Library of the Government Publishing Office. It’s a useful finding aid for older documents.

Additional Information

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