Welcome to our new blog! We are jointly sharing this blog with our colleagues in our Information Services department, as well as the rest of The Library. We are excited about the possibilities of collaboration on this new platform.

In our first blog post, I would like to invite our readers to visit the Richardson-Sloane Special Collections Center, either in person or through our online resources.

In-person visitors will experience the new Special Collections! During the summer of 2025, the Richardson-Sloane Special Collections Center moved into its new public service space on the 2nd floor of the Davenport Public Library at Main. This move has enabled us to be a more visible asset in The Library and to use our former area more effectively for collections storage.

In the year since, we have been helping individuals research their ancestors, their homes and buildings, businesses, and so much more.

We would like to highlight a few of our new additions and some of our favorite resources, which are continually updated.

Our move involved the purchase of a new set of map cases to store some of our most-used large-format materials, including:

• Materials from the ephemera collection
• 2004-67: African- American Residential Patterns
• Iowa maps
• Scott County maps
• Davenport maps
• 1886 and 1910 Sanborn Maps
• 1916 Huebinger Atlas
• 1940s Municipal plat map
• 2010-01: Ament Plat Book No. 3 Subdivision prints
• Cemetery maps
• 2007-15: 1980 Aerial photographs.

Due to the fragile nature and large size of these materials, we ask anyone wishing to use these materials to seek assistance from our Special Collections staff. The purchase of our new map case was completely funded by the Scott County Iowa Genealogical Society (SCIGS).

Another new addition is this bank of lockers for our Special Collections patrons. The lockers are for the personal belongings of people using our space, to keep their belongings safe and protect our materials. This is especially useful for our users who plan to research with us all day!

We have updated our Special Collections Indexes according to the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1 Level AA requirements for state and local governments to ensure everyone can easily use this research tool. You can search across all indexes or browse individual ones!

The Upper Mississippi Valley Digital Image Archive (UMVDIA) is a platform that allows the Davenport Public Library and many other Quad Cities regional cultural and historical institutions to provide access to their digital or digitized collections. This resource was started in 2002. We have added several new institutions to the collections in the last decade, such as the Vasa Archives, the German American Heritage Center and Museum, and the Bix Beiderbecke Museum and World Archives Collection.

The Archive and Manuscript Catalog connects you to one-of-a-kind materials documenting Davenport and Scott County history.

The collections described in this catalog can range from a single sheet of paper to multiple boxes of materials. We encourage you to search this fantastic repository of local history. If you are unable to find something, please reach out to the Richardson-Sloane Special Collections staff.

Our Research Guides (LibGuides) gather together in a single place all the materials available in Special Collections on frequently-requested local history topics. We also have a guide to genealogy research.

We look forward to assisting you with local history or family history research!