Welcome the Illinois Room, which is the Quincy Public Library's special collections.
If you are interested local history or genealogy, there are all sorts of things in here for you. Among QPL's more popular special collection items are yearbooks for both Quincy Senior High & Quincy Notre Dame. We also have city directories, dating all the way back to the 1800s, & they are very helpful in both local history (tracing a building through time) & in genealogy (the ability to see where your family members were living). The Quincy Public Library also has several cemetery indexes, a few church related books, Carl Landrum's books, & a whole array of history of Quincy & Adams County.
We books that can help with research on neighboring counties, as well as Illinois History, QPL's Illinois Room. Plus, there are materials that can be used to help trace your family as the migrated to Quincy, either from other states or abroad. We have Mayflower Society books & various genealogical magazines on the shelf. And don't forget that the Quincy Public Library serves as a state government document repository. Anything put out by the State of Illinois, can end up on a shelf in the Illinois Room or we can help you access the information digitally.
The Illinois Room also has state census records on microfilm, as well as the Quincy Herald-Whig microfilmed back to the mid-1800s, & library staff can help set you up with a microfilm machine. And don't forget about the digital side of things. The Quincy Public Library has a subscription to Ancestry that can only be used on one of the library's computers & there are three set up in the Illinois Room, with the express purpose of local history & genealogy research. QPL also has access to an architecture database, a historic newspaper archive, & a historic photo archive, all of which can be accessed in the library or on your personal computer.
If you ever find yourself in a bind with these things, there are library staff members who are quite adept at research & are more than willing to help you look up your questions.
Lastly, the Illinois Room has functioned as a quiet study space or a quiet place for meetings, in addition to the space the study rooms provide for those services.