Donating to the Archives

The La Crosse Public Library Archives is always interested in improving and expanding our collection.  To do this, we rely primarily on donations of materials related to the history of La Crosse.  Do you have something to donate to the Archives?  Let us know!

A few guidelines for donations:

  • Archives staff will review the materials you wish to donate--unfortunately, not all items are appropriate for the scope of the Archives' collection.
  • No donation is too large or too small--we are just as happy to recieve a single item as an entire box (or more!).
  • We prefer to accept your original item(s) for donation when possible, but understand that you may want to hold on to the original(s) in some situations.  If this is the case, please consider letting us make a copy of your item(s) for our collection.
  • We can accept items of many formats: paper, photographs, bound volumes, audio or video recordings, and even digital files!
  • At the time of donation, we will ask you to transfer any known rights you hold over the item(s) to us, which allows the Archives to let researchers have full access to the materials you donate.  Note that this means future researchers may make copies of item(s) donated for their personal use.
  • While we are interested in accepting most items that are related to the history of the La Crosse area, the Archives already has all issues of the La Crosse Tribune in our collection, and will decline the offer of these items.