In an effort to increase access to Middletown materials for researchers, the Ball State Universities Libraries, in collaboration with the Center for Middletown Studies, is developing the "Middletown Digital Archives" of documents, oral histories, photographs, maps, and other sources from Archives and Special Collections. As material is digitized, it will become available as part of the Digital Media Repository and accessible through this Web site.

Digital Media Repository Collections

Robert F. Kennedy Speech Collection

Other Side of Middletown Photograph Collection

Eleanor Roosevelt Speech Collection

Otto Sellers Photograph Collection

Spurgeon-Greene Photograph Collection

W.A. Swift Photograph Collection

The Man Haters Film Collection

Middletown Digital Oral History Collections

Delaware County Methodist Churches Collection

Muncie Chevrolet Plant Architectural Drawings

Munce Post-Democrat Newspaper Collection

Muncie Sanborn Fire Insurance Collection

Muncie and Delaware County Historic Maps and Atlases

Additional Online Resources

Middletown: An Annotated Bibliography

Arranged chronologically by publication date, this bibliography brings together all major, Middletown-related printed sources and dissertations known to the authors, ca. 1924-1987. Included are items from newspapers, wire stories, databases, indexes and archival and printed sources. It omits those references which mention the Middletown work of the Lynds and their successors only in passing. It also does not include publications by the Lynds which lack Middletown content.

Middletown Area Study

Annual surveys sponsored by Ball State's Department of Sociology and the Center for Middletown Studies between 1978 and 2004. The purpose of these studies was to assess the views and lifestyles of citizens on major topics including questions on life satisfaction, education, income, family, religion, and politics.  Archives and Special Collections has the codebooks and question bank for this study. The data is available online through the Association of Religion Data Archives, which can be reached through the link above.

Collection Guides

Online subject guides to resources available in Archives and Special Collections.  Subjects covered include African Americans, World War II, labor history, Native Americans, oral history collections and the Ku Klux Klan.

Archives and Special Collections Exhibits

Online versions of Archives and Special Collections Exhibits, including three Middletown-themed exhibits: "75 Years of Middletown," "Celebrating Local African American History," and "Photographing Middletown, USA."

For information on these and other Middletown resources, contact the Archives and Special Collections, Bracken Library 210, Ball State University, Muncie, IN 47306, telephone, (765) 285-5078, or e-mail libarchives@bsu.edu.