We house over one million photographs of local people and locations, dating from the mid-19th century to the present. Selected images have been digitized and are available online through our Local History Online Catalog, Flickr albums, and digital collections.

Some notable photograph collections include:

  • News-Gazette Negative Collection (1940-2002)*
  • McCandless Photography Studio Collection (1965-2001)
  • Pilon Studio Collection (circa 1950s)
  • Postcard collections with images documenting Champaign County, the University of Illinois, and Illinois.

*We have a small selection of News-Gazette negatives from 1936-1940. Our holdings do not include negatives for November 9, 1964-1974. Negatives for September 25, 1960-January 3, 1962, were destroyed by fire.