Welcome University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

This month the IDHH welcomes the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) into the hub. UIUC is no stranger to DPLA, and has been a contributing content hub to DPLA since 2013, so we are pleased to welcome a DPLA veteran aboard. UIUC comes to the IDHH with 19 collections ranging in subject from historical maps of Africa to theater and costume design, Irish political cartoons, and much more.

As part of the many collections that the University of Illinois is making available, the Sousa Archives and Center for American Music’s Music Instrument Digital Image and 3D Model Collection boasts 231 images of historical instruments (1810-1972) and includes both the familiar and the unfamiliar. The instruments chronicle the evolution of many of the instruments that we recognize today, as well as many instruments that are a product of their time and did not continue to be produced.

Check out this sneak peek of some of the instruments in this collection.

Frontal view of bugle against black background.
Bugle from the Carl Busch Papers and Music Instrument Collection, ca. 1833-1924 (series 12/9/91), Sousa Archives and Center for American Music, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Rectangular experimental guitar made of wood. Right side has 10 levers, there are 12 strings in the center, and a metal plate at the bottom.
Experimental Guitar, Elbern H. “Eddie” Alkire Personal Papers and Music Instrument Collection, 1926-1997 (series 12/9/91), Sousa Archives and Center for American Music, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Image of a heckelphone. Double-reed instrument made of a reddish wood with metal keys.
Heckelphone from the University Bands Collection, ca. 1840-1997 (series 12/9/93), Sousa Archives and Center for American Music
Wood and ivory instrument with finger holes. In the bagpipe family.
Musette from the Carl Busch Papers and Music Instrument Collection, ca. 1833-1924 (series 12/9/93), Sousa Archives and Center for American Music, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Silver instrument with keys, similar to saxophone, but with bell facing upwards.
Sarussophone from the Carl Busch Papers and Music Instrument Collection, ca. 1833-1924 (series 12/9/93), Sousa Archives and Center for American Music, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

To see more of the images in the collection, please click here.

The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign has many other collections as part of the IDHH here.