The Map Library maintains a comprehensive collection of over 190,000 aerial photographs for all Illinois counties, with the earliest photographs from the late 1930s and the most recent from 2005. Most of the photographs are black-and-white and are either 6 x 9 or 9 x 9 inches. Photographs taken before 1988 are county-based sets and are at an approximate scale of 1:20,000. Each year has its index. Beginning in 1988, photography of the state was created as a state-wide set, at a scale of approximately 1:40,000. These photographs are quarter quadrangle centered. Most of the photographs are products of the United States Department of Agriculture or the United States Geological Survey in cooperation with state agencies.
Beginning in the fall of 2018, the University Library is scanning the indexes to all the aerial photography sets in alphabetical order by county name. Library users, especially those at a distance from Champaign-Urbana, are encouraged to use the scanned indexes to identify needed photographs and to request photographs through the web-based request form (https://forms.illinois.edu/sec/1947069). The link to the form appears on each index sheet’s webpage. Once photographs have been retrieved from our files, the Map Library will contact requesters regarding in-library use or scanning.

For additional information about the Map Library’s collection of aerial photographs, including a table of the Library’s holdings for each county, please see Aerial Photography in the Map Library (https://www.library.illinois.edu/max/collections/aerial_photographs/).