Find items in UIC Library collections, including books, articles, databases and more.
Find items on the UIC Library website, including research guides, help articles, events and website pages.
The collection home page lists the four sections of the Chicago Building Permits collection.
NOTE: Please do not use the search box. The search function does not work on the handwritten documents in the collection.
Once you select a section of the collection from the home page, you'll see a table listing the reels in that section.
Once you've selected a reel of microfilm, you'll see several tools in the interface to help you navigate to the right place on the reel and enhance or enlarge the page image so you can read it. These tools are what make the Digital Reel system work something like a traditional microfilm reader.
Pictured above: the default page display when you select a reel to view. The navigation and image management tools are highlighted.
When you display a reel, it will display the first image on that reel. The index card or permit you need may be near the end of that reel. There are 3 ways to navigate through the reel:
1. Click the left and right arrows on either side of an image to move the next image. Use this method when you are very close to the index card or permit you need.
2. Click on the page number display at the top of the screen. This will allow you to enter a higher page number to jump ahead on the reel. For example, say you are looking at the street index reel for 4949 S. Hermosa to 8416 S Honore and you are looking for 2042 N. Honore. The reel has 5157 images. You can guess that Honore street is near the end of the reel. If you click on the page number and type in 4500 to jump ahead to near the end of the reel, you will be closer to the address you're looking for.
3. Click on the VIEW FILM button to the right of the page image. This will take you to a screen that lets you scroll through the reel as if you were using a microfilm reader. From here you can:
Use the right or left arrow images to scroll forward or backward on the reel
Click on the blue dot at the bottom of the screen and drag it forward or back to move through the reel.
Pictured above: the reel scroll view you see once you click on the VIEW FILM button.
You can scroll quickly through the reel by dragging the blue circle left or right.
Some common image adjustments you'll need to make for legibility are to decrease the brightness and increase the contrast. You may sometimes need to press the Deskew option to straighten crooked pages.
The image quality in this collection varies a great deal. Different images and even different areas of an image may need different display adjustments to be clearly legible.
You may need to use multiple tools to print or download a single permit. In the example below, the following steps produced a print of a single permit:
The permit I want to print is the third form in the top row.
The Download option offers multiple formats.
Because this collection is divided into sections, you'll often need to return to the home page and select a different section of the collection to continue. To return to the home page from a microfilm viewing screen, click the arrow in the upper left corner of the screen.
We do not recommend that you use the search tool in Digital Reel. This collection is handwritten text and is not searchable.
When you're in the Digital Reel system, a link to this guide for using the Chicago Building Permits Collection is available from the Instructions column of each list of reels.
There is also a Digital Reel user manual and access to brief instructional videos in the Help menu. These are strictly about using the Digital Reel system to navigate digitized microfilm; they are for all Digital Reel users, and are not specific to the Chicago Building Permits Collection.
NEXT: Using the Street Index