The State of Illinois keeps is public records safe and secure in archives and databases in it's capital city of Springfield. The types of records that it stores are ones like birth, death, marriage, divorce, property and business records and people can actually view these, hence the term "public records" but in order to view them your request has to be authorized by the states council because they cannot just let anyone walk into the archives and view records.
In order to look at public records in the archives at Springfiel you have to complete many steps, which include:
Locating the department of public health's website
Getting the address for the department
Writing a request formdetailing why you want access to records
Send the request form
Once you have done this, you have to wait for many weeks which can easily turn into months because the council have to evaluate your application and when if they grant you permission it will be another few weeks before they alert you to let you know that you have been given permission. If this is the case then you can either travel to the town hall where the archives are kept or you can mail order a copy, however a lot of people who have done this have experienced some issues in the sense that they have either been sent the wrong copy or when they have travelled to the town hall they have been denied access or the records they are searching for aren't there or out of date.
In spite of all this there is infact another way to successfully view public records without having to leave the comfort of your own home, which is to use a professional record service to view records online. Professional record services such as Online Sleuths specialize in offering thousands of records to you by ordering them in their highly sophisticated databases and online archives. In order to do this you first need to become a member by inputtin the necessary information requried to join and there is also a small membership fee of around $20-$40 but once you join you have full access to search the database and locate any records you want.
To view birth records for the state of Illinois I would recommend that you use Online Sleuths as they have the largest archive containing Illinois Birth Records