Preserving Your History

Help us to preserve your history. Too much of it is lost in trashcans, paper shredders, hot attics, leaky basements, and with the delete button. Archives and Special Collections offers a better alternative. Using archival appraisal methods, professional archivists select materials for preservation that will provide opportunities for study by future generations. But we can't do it without your support.

Those letters in your attic that granddad wrote to grandma during the Civil War may be the raw material that will help a history student finish his dissertation. Those records of the organization that your father and you belonged to for so many years could provide the missing information for a researcher writing an organizational history or studying the impact of social organizations in the 20th century. That diary you wrote in every night during World War II might be invaluable to the historian doing a documentary on Indiana's participation in the war. All those great photographs of your ancestors working in the factory may help someone tell the story of their lives. Archives and Special Collections will preserve them and make them available for future uses that none of us may be able to imagine today. You can make it happen by donating to the Archives.

Donating to the Archives
Archives and Special Collections collects and preserves documentation in the following areas:

• Local history (Muncie and Delaware County)
• Ball State University history
• Materials related to Muncie as "Middletown"
• Rare books and manuscripts (consult Archives staff for specific areas)
  

Types of materials collected and preserved by the Archives include, but are not limited to:

• Records of businesses, industries, organizations, churches, and government
• Personal and family papers
• Photographs
• Oral histories
• Scrapbooks, diaries, correspondence
  

If you have materials that you would like to donate to the Archives, or you would like to support the Archives' mission through financial means, please contact us.

Ball State University personnel and units donating official records of the university should use the Records Transmittal Form.

Thank you for your support. We look forward to hearing from you.