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Newberry Library Roundtable:What Is The Midwest? (Mayo 2024)
Newberry Library, biblioteca de investigación gobernada y financiada de forma independiente ubicada en Chicago y fundada en 1887. Gratis y abierta al público, Newberry se concentra en las humanidades. Sus colecciones principales se encuentran en las áreas de estudios de indios americanos e indígenas; Historia y cultura estadounidense; Chicago y el medio oeste; genealogía e historia local; la historia del libro; manuscritos y archivos; mapas, viajes y exploración; el mundo medieval, renacentista y temprano moderno; musica y baile; y religión Las crecientes colecciones de la biblioteca incluyen más de 1,500,000 libros, 5,000,000 páginas de manuscritos y 500,000 mapas históricos. The Newberry alberga una amplia variedad de exposiciones, seminarios, conferencias y espectáculos.
Historia
The Newberry fue fundada el 1 de julio de 1887 y abrió sus puertas el 6 de septiembre de ese año. El Newberry surgió debido a una disposición contingente en la voluntad del empresario de Chicago Walter L. Newberry, quien murió en el mar en 1868. (Su cuerpo fue preservado a bordo en un gran barril de ron vacío hasta que pudiera ser devuelto a Chicago e enterrado en Graceland Cementerio.) Su legado de aproximadamente $ 2.2 millones apoyó la fundación de una biblioteca "pública y gratuita" en el lado norte del río Chicago, si sus dos hijos murieron sin problemas. Después de la muerte de las hijas de Newberry y luego, en 1885, de su viuda, los fideicomisarios de su patrimonio, con el consejo de los líderes empresariales y culturales de Chicago, se trasladaron para establecer la biblioteca como una institución de investigación y referencia. De 1887 a 1888 estuvo ubicado en 90 La Salle Street,desde 1888 hasta 1890 en 338 Ontario Street, y desde 1890 hasta 1893 en la esquina noroeste de las calles State y Oak.
The Newberry’s founding librarian, William Frederick Poole, had been the first librarian of the Chicago Public Library. Under Poole’s leadership, the Newberry purchased 25,000 books in its first 18 months, and by the end of Poole’s tenure in 1894, it had amassed a collection of 120,000 volumes and 44,000 pamphlets.
In 1889 the trustees acquired property on West Walton Place to build a permanent home for the Newberry. The site was chosen because of its “highest usefulness to the greatest number,” good sunlight, and access to public transportation. Poole and the architect hired by the Board of Trustees to design the building, the young Henry Ives Cobb, disagreed vigorously about the arrangement of the interior spaces. Poole’s vision won out, and as a consequence the new structure contained smaller reading rooms with specific collections in close proximity to the library staff that possessed relevant expertise; it did not include a central bookstack. Cobb’s Romanesque exterior was built of pink granite from Branford, Connecticut. The new building opened in November 1893. Public exhibitions began in 1896 and became frequent from 1909.
In 1896 the Newberry began to focus its collection on the humanities, as the result of an agreement that divided library specialization with the Chicago Public Library and the new John Crerar Library of science and technology (now at the University of Chicago). After the turn of the 20th century, the Newberry began to add important humanities collections acquired en bloc by purchase and via gifts. Its large collection of medical materials went to the Crerar Library in 1907.
Fellowships for advanced research and scholarly conferences were introduced in the 1940s and gradually became a major feature of the Newberry in the 1960s and’70s. In the 21st century some 50 scholars had Newberry fellowship support every year. Semester-long undergraduate seminars began in concert with Midwestern liberal arts colleges through the Associated Colleges of the Midwest in 1965 and later with Chicago universities. Four research centres—Hermon Dunlap Smith Center for the History of Cartography, D’Arcy McNickle Center for American Indian and Indigenous Studies, Center for Renaissance Studies, and Dr. William M. Scholl Center for American History and Culture—were established in the 1970s, with the goal of stimulating disciplinary and interdisciplinary scholarship. They sponsor two university consortia and many seminars, institutes, and other programs. The addition of the 10-story stack building in 1982 provided environmentally secure conditions for the collections and enabled the main Cobb Building to be refitted for staff activities and a wider array of public programming, including a large seminars program for adult education.
Collections
The Newberry’s founding donor, Walter Newberry, was unable to leave books for the library because his personal goods were destroyed by the Chicago fire of 1871. But his financial legacy made it possible for the Newberry to buy much material in its earliest years, including the great music library of the Florentine count Pio Resse (1889), the collection of rare books and manuscripts (including a Shakespeare First Folio, many incunabula, and two Grolier bindings, among other treasures) assembled by Henry Probasco of Cincinnati (1890), and the 17,000-volume collection of language and linguistic material of Louis-Lucien Bonaparte (1901). Genealogical resources began to be purchased regularly before 1900. During the 1920s and’30s, the Newberry annually purchased large numbers of incunabula.
The largest single expenditure to acquire a collection came in 1964 with the purchase of the Louis H. Silver collection of English and Continental early and first editions. Other notable mid-20th-century purchases included the Franco Novacco collection of European maps and views and the Francis Driscoll collection of American sheet music, as well as a 35,000-item collection of French Revolution-era pamphlets. Among the most notable purchases of large collections are the Klaus Stopp collection of printed German-American birth and baptismal certificates and a substantial group of maps and books with maps from the collection of the Chicago History Museum.
The gift of two major collections in the years after 1910 permanently shaped the Newberry. In 1911 Edward E. Ayer began giving the library his extraordinary collection of materials related to American Indians. In 1917 John M. Wing left the Newberry his equally exceptional collection related to book history and printing. Both men bequeathed funds that have allowed their collections to grow mightily since that time. The same was true of William B. Greenlee and Everett D. Graff, who gave extremely important collections related, respectively, to Portugal and Brazil and to the American West; they also provided funding for future purchases. The Rudy L. Ruggles collection, focusing on key elements of American constitutional history and literature, was also supplemented by a purchase fund.
Other collections include manuscript materials and archives related to Chicago, major railroad companies (Chicago, Burlington and Quincy; Illinois Central; and Pullman Company), the history of dance (the Ann Barzell collection), journalism and local news organizations (Chicago Daily News, Chicago Sun-Times, Chicago Reader, City News Bureau), and Chicago clubs (such as the Dill Pickle Club).
Maps and map-related materials have come to the Newberry in abundance since the 1980s. These materials have included the maps and atlases published by Rand McNally & Company since 1876, as well as the archives of Rand McNally, the General Drafting Company, and the H.M. Gousha Company. From the Roger S. Baskes Collection of books with maps have come some 10,000 items during the 2010s.
Material related to religion is also prominent at the Newberry. Thousands of items related to European and American religion, which are today part of the Sister Ann Ida Gannon Initiative, have come from Mundelein College, the Society of the Divine Word, the Dominican Friars of the Province of St. Albert the Great, Concordia University, the Passionist Monastery of Chicago, the McCormick Theological Seminary, and the Catholic Theological Union.
