Library Online Resources

The Marie Louise Rosenthal Library’s collections are an essential resource for the Museum’s research, exhibitions, and educational programs. Several online tools and resources are available to help you explore the Library’s holdings and related materials:

Online Catalog

WorldCat Discovery
Use the online catalog to find bibliographic information about books and journals in the Library’s collections, as well as materials held by libraries worldwide.

Please note: The library’s electronic resources include both open-access materials and subscription-based databases. If a link prompts you to log into the Field Museum Remote Proxy, this means public access is available onsite only. Library staff and affiliates may contact the Library to set up remote access privileges.

As an additional resource for locating titles in the print collection, please see the list of serials available in the Library's collection.  Please note: this list is out of date and we may no longer receive many of the titles listed. For the most accurate and up-to-date holdings information, please refer to the online catalog (noted above).

Digital Collections

Explore digitized materials from the Field Museum’s collections, including journals, monographs, archives, and multimedia:

Annual Reports
Field Museum annual reports celebrate the excellence of and report on the academic and financial standings of our exhibitions, educational programming, conservation activities, and scientific research.

Biodiversity Heritage Library 
The Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL), with the Field Museum as a participating member, is a global consortium of natural history, botanical, research, and national libraries dedicated to digitizing their collections of natural history literature and making them freely available online. Through its platform, users can explore millions of pages of historic and contemporary biodiversity texts from libraries and museums worldwide.

Global Commodities: Trade, Exploration & Cultural Exchange
This site provides a vast range of visual, manuscript, and printed materials sourced from over 20 key libraries and more than a dozen companies and trade organisations around the world. These original sources are meant to help scholars explore the history of 15 major commodities and to examine the ways that these have changed the world. The Field Museum contributed important works related to the timber trade, illustrations of cacao, and material on silver and gold.

Internet Archive –  Field MuseumTexts Collection
Search and read a wide range of public-domain books and documents, including rare natural history texts and museum publications.

LibGuides
Find research guides created by Field Museum librarians, offering pathways to collections and scholarly resources.

PHOTO ARCHIVES:

Field Museum Media Public Portal
The portal includes Field Museum media published by Collections (Anthropology, Botany, Geology, Zoology), Photo Archives, Action, Research, Exhibitions, Learning, and other areas.

Flickr Photo Collection
Browse historic images from the Field Museum and its expeditions.

Illinois Digital Archives
The Field Museum has contributed three photo collections to the Illinois Digital Archives: 

• World's Columbian Exposition
• Urban Landscapes of Illinois
• History of Exhibitions at the Field Museum 1921–1959

Photo Archives Tumblr
Discover curated highlights from the Field Museum’s Photo Archives, featuring images and stories from the Museum’s past. Please note: This account is no longer updated. 

MUSEUM ARCHIVES:

CONTENTdm Digital Collections 
Access curated digital collections, featuring photographs, manuscripts, and other resources from the Field Museum’s Archives.

Museum Archive Moving Picture Collection
Watch rare footage from the Field Museum’s archives — glimpses of Arctic, Native American, Central American, and Middle Eastern cultures and expeditions.