Search Our Collections
Welcome to Special Collections & University Archives
About This Site
Welcome to CARDinal, the Cyclone Archival Research Database. Here you can search/browse all of our finding aids, or collection descriptions, which provide information about the creation, historical context, creators, and contents of collections. Materials include primary sources such as manuscripts, university records, audiovisual recordings, oral histories, digital records, artifacts, and more.
A note about language
Special Collections and University Archives (SCUA) collects, preserves, and provides access to primary resources for teaching, learning, and research. Some resources may contain offensive stereotypes, ideas, visuals, or language. Such materials serve as evidence of the era in which they were created, and are part of the historical record. These artifacts do not represent the views of SCUA nor of the university, which strongly condemn racism and oppression, and strives to overcome historical and divisive biases in our society. Researchers are therefore advised to proceed with caution when collections have been identified as containing offensive content. We recognize that researchers may be concerned about interacting with this content. To this end, we endeavor to add Content Warnings to finding aids when collections have been identified as containing these materials. If you find any collection material you think deserves a warning, please email archives@iastate.edu.How to search
To search all collections, type a keyword into the search bar. To search for a specific Collection Number, select “Identifier” from the dropdown menu. The search will only return results if the identifier is formatted correctly: ‘RS 12/6/4’ for University Archives, or ‘MS-0715’ for Manuscript Collections.
Click on the tabs above to browse holdings by Collection (title), Subjects, Names, or Collecting Areas. If you are browsing by University department (or Record Group) click on Collecting Areas, then University Archives. You can further narrow your results by clicking on the filters in the right-hand menu.
If you are interested in only seeing digital material, you can click on the Digital Materials tab in the top menu. You can also limit your search results by selecting “Limit to digital materials” from the dropdown menu. Note: not all digital material in our holdings is described in our finding aids. For additional digital content, search Digital Collections or the Digital Repository.
Multiple terms entered into one search box are handled as if connected by an OR statement. For AND statements, use the plus (+) button to add a row for each term. Use quotation marks around multiple words to search an exact phrase.