ILLINOIS STATE ARCHIVES
Chicago City Council Proceedings Files, 1833–1871 — Thesaurus
Up to six subject terms have been assigned to each of the proceedings files. These subject terms include names of persons, businesses, churches and other organizations, street and place names and various topics related to the files (e.g., jails, icehouses, and taxes). There are 8781 distinct subject terms. This thesaurus contains a list of all subject terms assigned.
The Chicago City Council Proceedings Files can be searched by subject using the terms found in this thesaurus. A search may be conducted using a single subject term or a combination of two subject terms using the AND or OR operators.
- This database provides access only to personal names that appear in the file titles and not to names that may appear within the files themselves. Illinois Regional Archives Depository (IRAD) staff cannot conduct a name search of individual documents such as teacher's reports or assessment rolls. Researchers are always welcome to visit the depository and search the records themselves for personal names.
- Names of persons used as subject terms were often spelled in various ways. Personal names are literal transcriptions of spellings found in the file title on the file jacket. Therefore, a name may appear in the thesaurus more than once with different spellings.
- Because the length of the subject term field in the database was limited, abbreviations are used when necessary. Because of these limitations, using the thesaurus of subject terms is recommended.