In an effort to preserve and increase access opportunities to locally significant materials, physical and digital local history collections are maintained by the library.

The Historical Collection attempts to complement the efforts of other local historical and genealogical groups in the area, such as the Hampshire Historical Society, please take a look at the Genealogy Research page for their links.

PHYSICAL HISTORY COLLECTION

Currently closed to the public.

DIGITAL HISTORY COLLECTION

Digitization is a priority. To support increased historical and genealogical access to materials, the library maintains three digital archives and a historical map. The three Ella’s Historical Collections are available through the Illinois Digital Archives. They contain select materials from the Local Historical Collections as well as digital donations.

• Ella’s Historical Collection
• Ella’s Historical Collection – Images
• Ella’s Historical Collection – Grand Army of the Republic, Post 453
• Annotated Google Map

HAMPSHIRE REGISTER NEWSPAPER

The local newspaper ran from approximately 1884 through 2009 and has been digitized. It may be found at here. For added fun, make sure you use these Boolean operators when searching the newspaper:

• AND—between two words includes both words
• NOT—removes the word after it from your results
• “Put parenthesis around all of your words” to find all of them.
• CTRL F on your keyboard brings up a search & highlight feature