Digital Collections

The American Turner Topics, published since 1936, is the newsletter of the American Turners. The Turner movement, begun in Germany in 1811, stresses physical fitness and German culture. German immigrants brought the movement to the United States in the 1840s and in 1850 established a national Turner association that is today known as the American Turners. The newsletter contains reports on the activities of the national organization and of individual Turner societies, obituaries of Turner members, and articles about Turner history and philosophy.

The American Turners is a national German-American organization founded in 1850 by German immigrants. The American Turners advocated a liberal political philosophy, protected the political rights of German-Americans, and promoted the preservation of German culture. Strong believers in physical fitness, the American Turners lobbied to have physical education made a part of the educational curriculum in public schools.

In 1893 members of the Indianapolis German-American community living on the south side of Indianapolis broke away from the Indianapolis Socialer Turnverein to form the Indianapolis South Side Turners. This organization stressed physical fitness and the preservation of German culture and was a social and cultural center for German-Americans in the southern part of the city. In 1900 the South Side Turners built their hall, equipped with a gymnasium and meeting rooms, at 306 Prospect Street. The group sold the building in 1977 and today is based in German Park on South Meridian Street.

The Athenaeum Turners is a German-American organization founded in 1851 as the Indianapolis Turngemeinde. Its original emphasis was on promoting physical fitness and intellectual development, advancing the political interests of German-Americans, and preserving German culture. The Athenaeum, the Turners' home since its opening in 1893, served as a gathering place for the Indianapolis German-American community, and members of the Athenaeum Turners were prominent leaders in the political, business, educational, and cultural life of the city.

During the American Civil War (1861-1865), Indiana Governor Oliver P.Morton's staff recorded thousands of the governor's incoming andoutgoing telegrams in small, bound books. The governor and his staffcommunicated by telegraph with the highest and most prominentgovernment and military leaders in the North, including PresidentAbraham Lincoln and Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton. Researchers willfind many uses of these messages. Historians studying politics andmilitary planning at the highest levels of federal and state governmentduring the Civil War will find many important communications. Personsstudying the organization and actions of Indiana volunteer regimentsand batteries will gain useful insights. Biographers, local historians,and genealogists will all learn much from consulting these records.

eArchives is an open access repository designed to store, preserve and provide access to the digital materials collected by the University Library's Ruth Lilly Special Collections and Archives. The two main areas of emphasis are:

1. IU Indianapolis University eArchives documenting the publications and resources of this urban university
2. Philanthropy eArchives documenting the scholarship and publications of the nonprofit sector.

The Indiana Historical Society (IHS) and Indiana University/Purdue University at Indianapolis (IUPUI) collaborated to establish this digital project pertaining to Flanner House. The approximately 5,000 digitized objects consist of photographic, manuscript, artifact, and printed images from the IHS and IUPUI Flanner House collections and several items related to Flanner House from various collections at the two repositories.

FOLIO (FOundation LIterature Online) is an online digital repository of foundation-sponsored research reports and publications covering the full scope of philanthropic activity. FOLIO, a project of the Foundation Center and University Library’s Ruth Lilly Special Collections and Archives, preserves and makes accessible material indexed in the Foundation Center’s PubHub .

The Indianapolis Maennerchor (men's choir), established in 1854 by German immigrants, is one of the oldest continuously active singing societies in the United States. The Maennerchor was an important organization in the early cultural life of Indianapolis, sponsoring musical events of national importance and bringing prominent singers and musicians to the city.

In 1893 members of the Indianapolis German-American community living on the south side of Indianapolis broke away from the Indianapolis Socialer Turnverein to form the Indianapolis South Side Turners. This organization stressed physical fitness and the preservation of German culture and was a social and cultural center for German-Americans in the southern part of the city. In 1900 the South Side Turners built their hall, equipped with a gymnasium and meeting rooms, at 306 Prospect Street. The group sold the building in 1977 and today is based in German Park on South Meridian Street. These photographs are part of the Indianapolis South Side Turners Records held by the IUPUI University Library Ruth Lilly Special Collections and Archives.

This collection of digital images visually represents IUPUI's and IU Indianapolis' history and development as a teaching facility, an academic institution, a continually transforming campus, and a group of ever growing students, faculty, and staff.

The Keystone View Company was the largest stereographic company in the world, specializing in national and international geographic and social science images.  The 488 slides in this digital collection include images from the Americas, Europe, Asia, Africa, and Australia. They depict scenes from agricultural, industrial, commercial, urban, rural, transportation, nature, historical and daily life situation. Images date from the 1890s through the early twentieth century.

The Archives of the National FFA Organization contains photographs and slides documenting the activities of its members.

PRO is a digital library of primary and secondary sources that supports teaching and learning about philanthropy and the nonprofit sector. Although providing access to the content of materials is our primary goal, the project also serves to preserve the ideas contained in rapidly deteriorating texts. The PRO collection is made up of images of the pages in the books, journals, and pamphlets. What you see is a scanned image of the actual pages of the original volume. Optical Character Recognition (OCR) has been performed on the images to enhance searching and accessing the texts.

Urban Displacement and the Making of a University is a collection that documents how IUPUI acquired the land on which it was built and is based on the holdings of the Ruth Lilly Special Collections and Archives at IUPUI. Items include correspondence related to property purchases, campus planning documents, assessments of home and business values, abstracts of title, oral histories, and a few items collected by administrators that show community discontent.