Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society!

The Internet Scout Project brings the welcome news that more than half a century of Illinois' quarterly historical journal (1950-2006) has been digitized and is browsable by issue. This may not be the ideal situation, but it's way better than having boxes full of the magazine around the house (as I did for years) and having to browse every issue manually, provided you could locate it.

There are many wonderful microhistorical sources in this archive. One of my favorites is in the Autumn 1982 issue, "Eight Weeks on a St. Clair County Farm in 1851: Letters by a Young German," but the link now has mysteriously quit working for me. Another goodie is in the winter issue of that year, when Edward R. Kantowicz wrote at length on the French Canadian settlements in Kankakee County.

Although this site has no index of its own, it can be searched via Google, using first site:http://dig.lib.niu.edu/ISHS/ as the search term, and then at the bottom of the resulting search page, clicking on "search within results" and inserting what you actually want to find.