At Indiana University, marvels modern and ancient tell stories of people, history, and cultural and scientific achievements, unlocking knowledge and furthering scholarship.
More than 250 collections at IU are overseen by University Collections. Created by IU Research, the organization maintains the university's most valuable resources, ensuring proper management, security and access.
"IU is a guardian of history and culture, with nearly 50 million individual objects spread across campuses," Vice President for Research Russell J. Mumper said. "These collections are crucial for expanding knowledge, advancing research and shaping the future."
Researchers from universities across the world come to IU to access its collections. With a call or an email to University Collections staff, they'll provide the correct avenues to access a particular collection.
A recent effort to expand access has led to an increased focus on digitization. With the IU Collects app, people near and far can view digital collections to enhance their in-person visit or tour from around the world.
"Our collections are not just here and kept away in storage," said Heather Calloway, executive director of University Collections. "They're actually being utilized for teaching, research and engagement with students, faculty scholars and community members."
The university is able to host the hundreds of collections it has thanks to its state-of-the-art preservation methods. The Ruth Lilly Auxiliary Library Facility, also known as "the ALF," houses books, paper materials and 3D objects. Each room is temperature and humidity controlled, so objects like film can be kept at a lower temperature. The facility also includes a walk-in freezer and anoxia treatment chamber to eliminate pests or mold on objects.
Treasure trove of rare manuscripts
Known around the world is the Lilly Library, centered in IU Bloomington's Fine Arts Plaza. The library serves as IU's principal rare books, manuscripts and special collections library, boasting over 460,000 books, 8,500,000 manuscript items and 120,000 items of sheet music.
Collections in the library include mechanical puzzles, political records from Indiana legislators, and manuscripts from once-in-a-generation writers like Sylvia Plath, Upton Sinclair and Indiana's own Kurt Vonnegut. To build and maintain the expansive collections, the library employs librarians, archivists, and rare material and digitization experts.
One of the many rare books and manuscripts relating to religion at the Lilly Library is the Gutenberg Bible, the first major European printed book. Photo courtesy of IU Libraries
"The Lilly Library is often spoken of in terms of its 'treasures' - illuminated handwritten Bibles and Qurans, the Shakespeare first folio, the letters of Edgar Allan Poe," said Rebecca Baumann, head of curatorial services at the library. "But what I love most about the Lilly are the materials created by and for ordinary people: doodles left by a child in the margins of a 15th-century medical text, engravings of a transgender bookseller in 18th-century London, a textbook from a beauty school founded by a Black entrepreneur.
"The Lilly is a classroom where you can encounter history with all your senses, a studio to be inspired by the past to create new futures, and a laboratory to play and explore with the very building blocks of human thought."
The most recently acquired collection on display at Lilly Library is "Love in the Library: The Romance Novel in English," which Baumann curated. The exhibition spotlights the importance of romance as a genre - a genre that has received less attention from special collections despite its popularity with readers across centuries.
"The Lilly Library is one of the most impressive special collections I've ever been fortunate to work around," Calloway said. "I'm always in amazement at some of the treasures and unique pieces IU has within that collection."
The intersection of couture, costumes and Close
Media makers from all disciplines choose IU for research and to keep their prized collections safe. Critically acclaimed actress Glenn Close, known for her roles in "101 Dalmatians" and "Fatal Attraction," donated her more than 800-piece costume collection from her most iconic movie roles to IU in 2017.
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The costumes are a part of the university's Sage Collection in the Eskenazi School of Art Architecture + Design. The collection is named after one of IU's first professors of textiles and clothing, Elizabeth Sage.
Close shopped several places to house her costume collection, including the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, but landed on IU after a tour of the ALF.
"No one literally that I know of or that I could find had the kind of facilities that Indiana University has and already had in their extraordinary, state-of-the-art, archival buildings," Close told IU in 2021.
The Sage Collection also includes haute couture, men's and children's fashion, and accessories. The more than 28,000 items of clothing and related objects span from over 250 years ago to the present day.
"Glenn Close's extraordinary costumes and personal wardrobe pieces, along with haute couture designs and examples of everyday dress like our real-life "Rosie the Riveter" ensemble and Indiana-only senior cords, foster hands-on learning experiences for IU students about craftsmanship and design, technological and artistic innovation, and social and individual identity, as well as the practicalities of preserving vulnerable unique historic and contemporary textiles for generations to come," said Kelly Richardson, director and curator of the Sage Collection.
Preserving celebrated author's legacy
On the IU Indianapolis campus in Cavanaugh Hall lives the Ray Bradbury Center and Museum. Founded in 2007, it was the nation's first center for the study of the "Fahrenheit 451" and "The Martian Chronicles" author.
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The Ray Bradbury Center is home to an early version of the author's best-selling book, "Fahrenheit 451." Photo by Liz Kaye, Indiana UniversityStarting as an extensive research library and archive of Bradbury's works, the center's primary focus was producing The New Ray Bradbury Review, a scholarly journal, and The Collected Stories of Ray Bradbury, a multivolume scholarly edition for Bradbury's stories in their earliest form. Fast forward 17 years, and the center grew into one of the largest single-author archives in the world.
Stepping into the Ray Bradbury Museum transports visitors into the science fiction author's basement, meticulously re-created using his original furniture to reflect the environment where some of his greatest works were created. The office's contents include more than 100,000 pages of published and unpublished literary works, 40 years' worth of personal and professional correspondence, as well as foreign language editions of his books. That's only a slice of Bradbury's works, as the museum also protects manuscripts, typescripts, screenplays and more from the author.
"This remarkable archive not only safeguards the legacy of one of the most influential writers of the 20th century but also serves as a beacon for scholars, students and fans alike to explore the intersection of science fiction, fantasy and human imagination," said Jason Aukerman, director of the Ray Bradbury Center.
Discover IU's diverse collections
With University Collections' extensive offerings, it's certain that IU has a collection to pique anyone's interests.
For the classic video game fan, IU Indianapolis' Media Arts and Science Research Learning Arcade has Nintendo Entertainment Systems dating back to 1983. Those inspired by Black cinema can visit Academy Award-winning filmmaker Kevin Willmott's film collection at IU's Black Film Center & Archive, the only repository in the world solely dedicated to collecting and preserving Black films and making them accessible. Interested in magic? The Lilly Library's Ricky Jay Collection is the premier archive of magical history.
"I really enjoy that aspect of my job that every day is different, and all the collections we have fall under a different unit, or school or college or department," Calloway said. "It's really unique that you can have so many different pieces that are used for research and teaching."
