Dispatches from the Newberry stacks, where millions of historic items are ready to be discovered—and blogged about.
Blog—Source Material
Soon after the Newberry building opened in 1893, pollution from a nearby coal-fired power plan started to stain its beautiful exterior.
An engraving from the 1820s is the closest representation of what the Declaration of Independence looked like at the time of its signing.
In the early modern era, students learned to read using hornbooks. Hornbooks were wooden boards or paddles covered with a protective screen made from...
Combining classwork, immersive site visits, conversations with Indigenous artists, and research within the Newberry archives, this year's NCAIS summer institute explored what it means...
The Newberry manuscript (whose call number is Ayer 1485) is a collection of sermons, written in Nahuatl, to be used in Catholic masses.
We interviewed Miriam Thaggert about her research and the significance of telling the stories of the Pullman Company maids.
In 1929, artist Wadih Betros NeJame created a drawing of the American flag composed of calligraphic text of the United States constitution.
Cooper Black made a splash in 1922, and it continues to appear all over the place. Bouncy, fun, and a little off-kilter, the typeface...
Among the many gems of the Newbery collection is a rare Missal (a liturgical book containing the text for the Mass) that was published...
The 1950 census and all its genealogical data recently entered the public domain.
The Rudolph Continuous Indexer briefly competed with Melvil Dewey’s card catalog for favor among libraries and librarians. In spite of its ingenuity, it was...
Next time you visit the Newberry, don’t forget to check your ink bottles in the cloak room.