Newberry Library Collections

Newberry Collections

The Newberry Library actively collects and preserves books, manuscripts, maps, and other printed materials related to the history and culture of Western Europe and the Americas. The collections span many centuries and feature items such as illuminated medieval manuscripts, rare early maps, rich genealogical sources, historical sheet music, and the personal papers of Midwestern literary figures, Chicago politicians, and others.

Since its early years, the Newberry has focused on the humanities, which is a broad category of academic disciplines that includes history, literature, art, foreign languages and cultures, music, philosophy, and religion. Today, the Library's evolving collections include more than 1.5 million books, 5 million manuscript pages, and 500,000 historic maps.

To discover what the Newberry Library may have in your area of interest, please explore the information and links below. For information on conducting research at the Newberry, please visit www.newberry.org/collections/researchers.html, or contact us.

Subject Areas - Selected Special Collections - Manuscript & Archival Collections - Catalogs

New Acquisitions - Publications About the Collections - Online Resources

Subject Areas

African American Studies	Historical Linguistics
American History	Italian History & Literature
American Indian History	Latin American History
American Literature	Maps & The History of Cartography
British History	Music
British Literature	Philippine History
Continental European History & Literature	Portuguese & Brazilian History
French in the Americas	Printing, Book Arts, & The History of the Book
Genealogy & Local History	Religion

Selected Special Collections

The Edward E. Ayer Collection American Indian History	The William B. Greenlee Collection Portuguese & Brazilian History
The Prince Louis-Lucien Bonaparte Collection Historical Linguistics	The Rudy L. Ruggles Collection American & British History
The Everett D. Graff Collection Western Americana	The John M. Wing Foundation Printing, Book Arts, & The History of the Book

Manuscript & Archival Collections

Modern Manuscript Collections, 1700-Present	Local & Family History Vertical Files
Calligraphic Manuscripts	Manuscript Maps and Archival Collections
Civil War Manuscripts	Newberry Library Archives
Dance Manuscripts	Philippine Manuscripts
European Manuscripts, Pre-1500	Manuscripts on Printing History
European Manuscripts, Post-1500	Railroad Archives
Indians & The West Manuscripts	Spanish Colonial American Manuscripts

Catalogs

An Illustrated Historical Atlas of the
State of Minnesota (Chicago, 1874)
Case oversize G1425 .A5 1874

In order to find items at the Newberry Library, you need to search our catalogs:

The Newberry Library's Online Catalog is the primary tool for identifying and locating resources relevant to your research. Books, maps, periodicals, and manuscripts are listed in this catalog. There are some materials that are not represented in the online catalog, some of which can be found using other online tools. For example, most of the Newberry's city directories are not in the online catalog. Instead, these are listed on our web site (www.newberry.org/genealogy/dirholdings.html).

The items represented in the Newberry's online catalog are also included in I-Share, the catalog for the Consortium of Academic and Research Libraries in Illinois (CARLI). They are also included in the free and subscription versions of OCLC's WorldCat.

The Newberry Library holds an estimated 500,000 maps issued separately and in atlases and books. Not all of these cartographic resources are listed in the online catalog. More than 50,000 records for maps, atlases, and literature on the history of cartography are available through the Newberry Library Cartographic Catalog (NLCC).
Manuscripts are also under-represented in the online catalog, having been traditionally described with paper finding aids and checklists. To explore the manuscript collections, please consult the online catalog and the Newberry's Manuscripts and Archives page. Some of the Newberry Library's modern manuscript collections (1700-present) are included in ArchiveGrid and in the online version of the National Union Catalog of Manuscript Collections (NUCMC).

New Acquisitions

The Newberry Library is pleased to share a selection of 2005-2006, 2004-2005, 2003-2004, and 2001-2003 new acquisitions. Please also see a list of our recent pre-1500 European manuscript acquisitions.

Publications About the Collections

A variety of catalogs, guides, checklists, books, articles and papers have been written about the Newberry Library's collections. To learn more about our collections, please consult the sources listed in this bibliography.

Online Resources

A number of Newberry Library research tools and online exhibits may be found on the Library's web site. Some digital images of Newberry Library materials may also be viewed on the web site for the Consortium of Academic and Research Libraries in Illinois (CARLI). Registered readers may use electronic databases when visiting the Library.