Realizing the Newberry Idea, 1887–2012 (review)

The Newberry Library in Chicago was established in 1887 by businessman Walter Loomis Newberry. After initially being a general reference library open to the public, as libraries in Chicago began to evolve, the Newberry took on a specialized role as Chicago’s humanities library, thus complementing the Chicago Public Library and the John Crerar Library, which specializes in science, medicine, and technology. The Newberry Library further breaks down its humanities focus into ten core collections, including a section entitled “Chicago and the Midwest,” which contains: newspapers and periodicals; print, manuscript, photographic, and cartographic materials from days of earliest settlement to modern times; the “Chicago and Midwestern Writers” manuscripts collection; and church and synagogue files, among other documents.¹ Realizing the Newberry Idea, 1887–2012 is part of a collection of approximately sixty digital exhibits available on the Newberry’s website. The topics of these exhibits support the core collections and range from vintage Valentine greetings to the history of mass tourism to westward expansion and the role of Chicago in the history of the American Midwest.² Researchers may also consult the Newberry’s Research Guides to the core collections.³

The Realizing the Newberry Idea, 1887–2012 exhibit was funded by the Elizabeth F. Cheney Foundation and curated by Martha Briggs, with support from the exhibitions team, digital exhibit coordinators, conservation department, and Newberry Library facilities staff. Rather than being organized chronologically, the exhibit is arranged thematically and is structured around the four principles that inform the “Newberry Idea”: (1) “To Acquire and Preserve a Broad Array of Special Collections Research Material”; (2) “To Sustain the Highest Standards of Collection Preservation, Bibliographic Access, and Reader Services”; (3) “To Encourage Life-Long Learning, as well as Civic Engagement”; and (4) “To Foster Research, Teaching, and Publication.” Two additional sections are included, entitled “Envisioning the Newberry Space” and “Newberry Presidents.” To supplement the exhibit’s textual history of the Newberry Library, Realizing the Newberry Idea, 1887–2012 also features approximately one hundred images that are drawn from the Newberry Archives. Such content includes: photographs of librarians and researchers (including one of the first librarian William Frederick Poole and another of researchers gathered around the Newberry’s copy of the Popul Vuh); material from the library’s catalogue; correspondence regarding the Newberry and its services, such as acquisition of materials; postcards; typewritten manuscripts; architectural drawings; early interoffice correspondence between departments and notes/reports made by librarians on reading room topics; brochures, tickets, and study materials for educational events.

Regarding site design, there is a navigation bar at the left of the page. Clicking on each section reveals a set of subtopics. For example, the section entitled “To Acquire and Preserve . . . “ contains the subsections “Building Special Collections”, “Early Collection Donations,” “Building Genealogy Collections,” “From a Library of General Reference to a Library of the Humanities,” and “Cooperative Collecting in Chicago.” Each subtopic, which displays on the right of the page, includes an introductory text and generally between three and seven images. There are also navigation buttons at the bottom right of the main frame that enable users to return to the previous page or advance to the next page. Realizing the Newberry Idea, 1887–2012 is best viewed on a desktop browser. There were no discernible differences in viewing between Firefox, Chrome, and Internet Explorer. If too many topics are expanded, then a glitch becomes evident in which text at the bottom of the left-hand navigation bar tends to disappear off the bottom of the screen. A welcome addition might be to add a zoom function to the image viewer, as many of the typed or handwritten documents can be difficult to read.

The exhibit should be of interest to scholars in the history of US libraries and librarianship. In particular, the section entitled “To Sustain the Highest Standards . . . “ details the Newberry’s contributions to the emerging field of librarianship and library classification in the US, which serves to establish Chicago as a major player in library...